Monday, May 17, 1999; Page A18

CHINESE PRESIDENT Jiang Zemin finally agreed to accept a phone call from President Clinton Friday. Officials here portrayed this diplomatic triumph as a sign that U.S.-China relations might be heading back toward normal after the disruption caused by NATO's unintended bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade May 7. But it's worth noting that, also on Friday, China's flagship newspaper made clear that the regime wasn't finished milking the bombing for propaganda value.

According to the People's Daily, the embassy was destroyed deliberately as part of a strategy to "drag China into chaos." The basic goal of "U.S.-led anti-China powers," the official newspaper said, is "to interfere with and ruin China's development. They are racking their brains in an attempt to drag a united, developed and satisfied China into chaos and the abyss of division."

Why would China's Communist regime continue in this vein? It's always problematic to speculate on the motives of a dictatorship that operates mostly in secret. Possibly, China's leaders, or some of China's leaders, really do believe that America is their enemy, in which case President Clinton's vision of a "strategic constructive partnership" must be questioned. It's quite likely, based on public comments last week, that officials hope to use this incident to pressure the United States and other countries to allow China to join the World Trade Organization on easier terms than would otherwise have been considered acceptable.

The regime also may believe that Western officials, if kept on the defensive, will be slower to protest when China imprisons dissidents and violates its citizens' human rights in other ways. Chinese officials may hope to deflect attention from China-related scandals in the United States, including alleged nuclear espionage and influence-peddling.

It was also last week, after all, that Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung testified for the first time in public that he had received $300,000 from the chief of Chinese military intelligence, Gen. Ji Shengde. The general, according to Mr. Chung, told him he could give the money to President Clinton's campaign or to the Democratic Party. "We really like your president," the general supposedly said. Mr. Chung contributed more than $360,000 to the Democrats before the 1996 election (all of which since has been returned) and visited the Clintons and the White House more than 50 times, but said only $20,000 to $35,000 of his contributions came from the general's slush fund. When he began cooperating with investigators, Mr. Chung said, he was threatened by an emissary of the same Gen. Ji.

Many of these claims remain uncorroborated, but they should not be dismissed lightly. As reports have mounted of Chinese theft of U.S. nuclear secrets, the knowing response here has been: Get over it. Everybody spies. If the United States can't guard its secrets, don't blame the Chinese. But allegations that a foreign power sought to influence a presidential election with sizable financial contributions and then sought to interfere in the investigation thereof would seem to warrant a less jaded response. What did the Chinese think they were buying, and were any of the goods delivered? Mr. Chung's story at the least raises questions about the U.S.-China relationship that Mr. Clinton now is struggling to revive.