CLINTON GOING TO CHINA UNDER A CLOUD

This week President Bill Clinton will leave for his trip to the Peoples Republic of China. We wish it were otherwise, but the chief executive of the United States departs under a cloud and with sharply diminished credibility in representing this country abroad.

The president will arrive to an official greeting in Tienanmen Square. That vast square was the scene, nine years ago this month, of the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators spouting nothing more than American ideals about liberty. In the melee, several young students were killed as Chinese tanks rolled over them. The president should have insisted on a greeting elsewhere than at this bloody scene.

Would that this were all. Sadly, President Clinton's own 1996 reelection campaign made sure it isn't. His anything-goes approach to fund raising will be remembered as a sordid episode without parallel in American history. On this much remains to be learned. Still, what we already know is that the Chinese launched a well-planned scheme to influence American election campaigns, and that millions of their illegal dollars flowed into various Democratic coffers, as this president posed for photos with foreign crooks, hustlers and Chinese arms dealers in the Oval Office.

There is also Clinton's approval of satellite and rocket technology's being provided the Chinese by the Loral corporation, whose CEO was the largest single donor to Democrats in 1996. There is China's horrific record on human rights: forced abortion, persecution and imprisonment of Christians, brutality toward the people of Tibet. And on and on.

Will the president's visit be, as Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft says, "a triumph of salesmanship over statesmanship"? If the president is to rescue anything worthwhile from this visit, he certainly has his work cut out for him.