THE MOUSE THAT COULD (AND DID) : IN A SHOW OF TRUE PLUCK, WALT DISNEY CO. DOES WHAT OUR ILLUSTRIOUS GOVERNMENT WON'T: OPPOSE THE BRUTAL REGIME IN BEIJING.

Byline: Joe C. Gelman

WHILE the Clinton administration was busy last week fine tuning its appeasement policy toward the Chinese dictatorship, Mickey Mouse was pursuing the exact opposite approach, one which the Clinton foreign policy folks might do well to learn from.

In a remarkable and rare show of corporate courage, the San Fernando Valley-based Walt Disney Co. made international headlines by flat out rejecting the demand by the People's Republic of China that it abandon a film depicting the life of Tibet's Dalai Lama.

The communist Chinese - who without provocation invaded, occupied and ravaged Tibet in 1951, and have remained there ever since - threatened to ``reconsider'' Disney's large investment plans in that country, including the possible development of a major theme park, if Disney didn't drop the film portraying the Tibet issue from the Dalai's perspective.

Disney's response to the dictators in Beijing was terse and to the point: ``We have an agreement to distribute the film `Kundun' by Director Martin Scorcese, and we have every intention of honoring that agreement.'' Period.

Disney's shot was heard around the free world. And while it generated an immediate avalanche of positive press, there were a few stuffy pundits who criticized the company for not engaging in a more long-winded defense of freedom of expression.

To the nabobs of negativism, I would say, sometimes less is clearly more.

When the German's surrounded the U.S. 101st Airborne at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II and demanded the outnumbered Americans' immediate surrender, General McAuliffe had only one word for the Nazis: ``Nuts.''

Well, Disney's response was the modern day corporate version of ``Nuts.''

I must confess that as a Disney stockholder, the whole thing makes me a little anxious with the prospect of a loss of future revenue. After all, China is a huge potential market, and successfully tapping into that market will undoubtedly boost the value of my stocks and help bankroll Michael Eisner's gigantic salary at the same time.

Yet I can't help but take pride in being a small investor in a large local firm that put fundamental values ahead of profit.

It's not unusual that large entertainment companies like Disney face censorship demands, especially from domestic special-interest groups promoting or protecting their own agenda.

But what makes this case particularly galling is that China isn't simply insisting that Disney refrain from distributing what it sees as a ``controversial'' film inside its own borders, which is bad enough. They wanted Disney to scuttle the project altogether so that no one on planet Earth would see the film, either.

The Chinese dictators are obviously not content with a $38 billion trade surplus with the United States. They are eager to export their homegrown suppression as well, by intimidating and threatening Western businesses, particularly entertainment and media institutions, into presenting their version of reality to the world.

And why shouldn't they try? After all, bullying has worked for them in the past. In 1994, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, actually removed the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service Television news from his satellite TV service in areas covering China because they objected to some of the BBC's programming and portrayals of Chinese human rights abuses.

Disney could have followed that example. They could have quietly made the issue go away by compromising. But apparently Mickey Mouse felt that there are certain basic principles that cannot be compromised, and that by taking a strong position now, they're laying the foundation of a healthier relationship with the Chinese authorities in the future.

There is evidence that such a strategy can pay off. In a much less publicized incident, Ronald McDonald, like Disney, took a stand, and it worked. It seems that after two years of conflict, a deal was finally struck between McDonald's restaurants and the Chinese authorities over the location of the world's largest McDonald's just off Tiananmen Square.

Despite a 20-year signed lease, the Beijing government had tried to arbitrarily force McDonald's to move its restaurant when they discovered that they could develop the location for more lucrative purposes.

By stubbornly refusing to yield despite two years of intimidation and threats, McDonald's ultimately received full compensation for its move and won the right to open up two more locations just down the street.

Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald have come to understand that appeasement only emboldens an aggressor, and inappropriate behavior rewarded only encourages more inappropriate behavior down the road.

Which leads me to the Clinton administration and its policy toward the Beijing regime.

While all of this was going on with Disney, the president of the United States was personally meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the Asian Pacific Economic Conference in Manila.

Evidently, the Chinese strongman was not even mildly intimidated by anything that he heard from our president's mouth, because no sooner was the meeting over than the threats and intimidation from the Chinese regime directed toward Disney intensified.

Disney's ``modest'' contribution to the Clinton re-election campaign failed to produce any help from the White House on this one.

Maybe that's because the president was busy listening to his unofficial adviser on China, Mr. James Riady, the reclusive Indonesian private business figure who helped funnel large quantities of questionable foreign cash to Clinton's re-election campaign through his crony John Huang at the Democratic National Committee.

In a detailed letter first discovered this week by the Wall Street Journal, Riady, who visited the White House over 14 times in the past few years, specifically advised President Clinton to tread softly when it comes to China, and he urged the president to do nothing that would jeopardize China's most-favored-nation trade status.

The $12 billion Riady family empire has extensive financial interests in China. They are developing a $1 billion power plant there in partnership with the Energy Corp. of, you guessed it, Little Rock, Ark.

Although the president denies any linkage between his timid China policy and the massive Riady-related political contributions to the DNC, one must truly stretch the imagination to believe that Clinton administration Asian policy and the corresponding large Asian contributions to the DNC are totally coincidental as the president so innocently, in a golly-gosh-gee kind of way, proclaims.

When President Clinton first ran for the White House in 1992, he justifiably trashed former President George Bush for refusing to take a tougher approach toward China. He accused Bush of shamelessly ``coddling dictators'' and putting profit above American principle.

But Clinton's position began to shift even before the polls closed in California. Maybe Riady gave him a quick education? Who knows. But Clinton should look to Disney if he really wants an education.

Like Disney, it is in the United States' interest to deal with and maintain a positive working relationship with the most populous country on Earth, China. But that relationship cannot be a one-way street. We have leverage with the Chinese, and we should not be afraid to use it when core American interests and values are at stake.

The Chinese need their large trade surplus with the United States, and they have a deep desire to join the modern world and global economy.

Yet by suppressing their own people and by intimidating and threatening foreign companies wishing to conduct legitimate business, by proliferating missiles and weapons of mass destruction to unstable and hostile regimes, then common sense would dictate that the Chinese dictatorship needs to be confronted more often and coddled a little less.

Mr. President, Mickey Mouse has shown you the way. Please don't let him down.

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Drawing: (Color) The mouse that could (and did)

Bradford Mar/Daily News