In 1993, then-Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa expressed his skepticism about China’s democratization in a summit with then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, according to Japanese diplomatic documents declassified by the Foreign Ministry Thursday.
He expressed this view when Clinton asked him about the future of China in their meeting in Washington on April 16, 1993, according to the documents.
Miyazawa also called on the U.S. government to continue to accord most-favored-nation trade status to China.
Clinton, when running in the 1992 presidential election, criticized as weak the attitude of George H.W. Bush, the U.S. president at the time, toward China.
After China’s bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989, Clinton took the position that it was necessary for the country to improve its human rights record in order for it to continue to receive most-favored-nation treatment.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/26/japan/politics/diplomatic-documents-miyazawa/