His timing was poor. Congress continues its confrontational mood in matters of Chinese diplomacy.
Relations are always on a thin edge of collapse.
Zhu's meeting with President Clinton was tainted with illegal political contributions and nuclear espionage. There's a peculiar perception about China inside the D.C. belt line. Naughton believes it is a cold-war hangover. They expect the communist regime to collapse any day. One of the myriad problems Americans have in understanding China is the slow evolution of social reform under a totalitarian rule.