Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (64 page)

The United States and China were both concerned that the Soviets might enter into a conflict between Vietnam and China, and not long after Deng's visit, U.S. officials began issuing warnings about how provocative it would be if the Soviets were to begin using Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay as a naval base.
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Although Carter did not support the Chinese attack on Vietnam and later conveyed this to the Soviets, by the time the attack was launched in late February, Deng had achieved his goal of making the Soviets more cautious about joining the Vietnamese side, because they were now worried that the United States might retaliate in some way.

While in Washington, Deng pursued his interest in sending Chinese students to the United States. But President Carter had his own concerns related to student exchanges. He complained, first, that foreign students in China were kept separated from Chinese students. Deng explained that China did this because living conditions in Chinese universities were not good and China wanted to provide acceptable conditions for foreigners. When Carter next said that he did not want China to choose which foreign students were acceptable to study in China, Deng laughed and remarked that China was strong enough to withstand students of various backgrounds and would try not to use ideology as a basis for acceptance. He added that travel would still be limited for foreign journalists, but that there would be no censorship of their writing.

During their final meeting, Carter and Deng signed agreements on consular offices, trade, science and technology, and cultural exchanges. Deng asserted that the United States and Japan could make a contribution to world peace if they urged Taiwan to negotiate with Beijing and if the United States reduced arms sales to Taiwan. He told Carter that Beijing would go to war over Taiwan only if, over a long period of time, Taiwan refused to talk with Beijing, or if the Soviets became involved in Taiwan.
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Brzezinski described the state dinner for Deng as perhaps the most elegant dinner held in the four years of the Carter White House.
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Carter himself reported that at the banquet, held on January 29, Deng's small size and exuberance made him a great favorite of his daughter, Amy, and the other children present, and that the pleasure seemed to be mutual.
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In her description of
their family life, Deng's daughter writes that her father deeply enjoyed playing with his grandchildren, even though he did not talk much.

Carter used the state banquet to engage Deng in a good-natured discussion of their different views of missionaries in China. Former Sunday-school teacher Carter, who in his youth had contributed his nickels through his church to missionaries in China, praised the role missionaries had played in China. He said that many of the missionaries who went to China were good people, and pointed to the schools and hospitals that they had established. Deng responded that too many missionaries had tried to change the Chinese way of life, and although he acknowledged that some schools and hospitals were still in operation, he also expressed his opposition to allowing missionary activities to resume. Carter then suggested that Deng allow the distribution of Bibles and freedom of worship, and when the president later visited China he felt satisfied that China had made progress in both of these areas.

Although Deng had been banished to the “Peach Garden” when Nixon visited China, he asked to meet Nixon to express his appreciation on behalf of the Chinese people for the former president's success in restoring relations between China and the United States. Carter agreed to Deng's request, allowing the two men to have a private visit. Carter also invited Nixon to the state banquet for Deng, the first time Nixon visited the White House since he had left in disgrace in August 1974.
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After his visit, Nixon wrote a thoughtful private letter to Carter supporting Carter's decision to normalize relations and offering some ideas about the future of U.S.-China relations.
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A program at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts following the state banquet, which was broadcast on national television, was described by one official as “probably the most glittering evening of the entire Carter Administration.”
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Georgia peanut farmer Carter stood hand-in-hand with soldier Deng, each representing his country. As they were introduced to the audience, the band played “Getting to Know You.”
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And after a group of American children, including Amy Carter, sang some of Deng's favorite songs in Chinese, Deng, in a completely unscripted gesture, went up and kissed their hands. Vice President Mondale perhaps was not greatly exaggerating when he said there was not a dry eye in the hall.
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In his meetings with cabinet members, Deng focused on trade issues. Meeting them on January 31, Deng predicted that if China were granted most-favored-nation status, which, in fact, would mean ordinary trade relations, before long U.S. trade with the mainland (which was then about equal in value to U.S. trade with Taiwan) would expand tenfold. In his meeting
with administration officials, Deng reached agreements ending the freeze on Chinese assets in the United States and on U.S. assets in China. U.S. administration officials agreed that, in addition to elevating the respective liaison offices to embassies, each country would establish two consulates in other cities. Deng discussed what needed to be done to permit direct airline flights between the two countries, and Chinese officials agreed to create a schedule for the U.S. media to set up news bureaus in China. Deng also carried on discussions about expanding academic and scientific exchanges.

Deng did not fully understand the process involved in gradually upgrading technologies nor did he fully grasp the calculations of private companies in using patents and copyrights to recoup their research and development expenses. Deng, just beginning to become aware of these complexities and filled with vaulting ambitions, simply declared that he did not want 1970s technology, but rather technology that was cutting edge.
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In meetings in the U.S. Senate, Deng was hosted by Senator Robert Byrd and in meetings in the House of Representatives by Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. Deng was fascinated by O'Neill's discussion of the separation of powers, especially the ways in which the legislative and executive branches competed for power and influence. Deng took a personal liking to O'Neill, who, in response to Deng's invitation, later visited him in Beijing. But as O'Neill later wrote, Deng had absolutely no doubt that, at least for China, the separation of powers was a terribly inefficient way to run a country, something China should avoid.
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A key issue that came up during Deng's meetings in Congress was whether China would let people emigrate freely. Just four years earlier, Congress had passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which required Communist countries to allow those who wished to emigrate to do so before Congress would grant those nations normal trading relations. When members of Congress pressed Deng about whether China would let emigrants leave China freely, Deng replied, “Oh, that's easy! How many do you want? Ten million? Fifteen million?” He said this with a straight face, and members of Congress did not pursue the issue. China was given a waiver and allowed the benefits of most-favored-nation status.
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Despite the careful preparations, a major flaw occurred in planning the location for a reception attended by America's “China hands.” The event was held in the beautiful new East Wing of the National Gallery, designed by Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei, to showcase the role of Chinese-Americans. The reception for the business, academic, and foreign policy
communities interested in China was sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association, the National Gallery of Art, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC, the Asia Society, and the U.S.-China Business Council. It was a grand gathering of people from different sectors, many of whom had known each other in Hong Kong, then the main center for China watchers in government and journalism, business, and academic circles before China had begun to open. It was a festive occasion, the celebration of a day that many of the participants had been working for and waiting for. When I. M. Pei was later told about the reception, he was aghast that Deng had been asked to give a speech there, since the acoustics were not at all designed for a public address. Indeed, when Deng spoke, the reception participants, unable to hear what he was saying even with a microphone, continued casually chatting with friends. Those close to Deng knew he was upset, but he continued reading his speech without revealing any sign of discomfort, as if he were addressing disciplined party members sitting motionless at a party congress.
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Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, and Seattle

In his talks with Washington officials, Deng dealt with global strategic issues, but in his travels around the country he observed modern industry and transport as he encouraged American businesspeople to invest in China, academics to promote scholarly exchanges, and the general public to support closer relations between the two countries.
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In his talks with businesspeople he stressed that China had many commodities that it could export to pay for the technologies he was so eager to obtain.
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At most stops there were protestors waving Taiwanese flags. At some, boisterous American leftists protested Deng's bourgeois betrayal of the Maoist revolution. But the overwhelming mood of his audiences was supportive—a mixture of eager curiosity and goodwill.
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In the United States, Deng did not hold an open press conference and did not answer questions live on television. Yet U.S. reporters traveling with him were impressed with his accessibility and his continuing efforts to respond to their questions and to those of the U.S. businesspeople whom he met on the trip. He did meet the primary television networks' four anchormen.
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And Don Oberdorfer, a distinguished diplomatic and Asian affairs reporter who traveled with Deng on his visits to the four cities, reported that Deng began to loosen up after his early days in Washington. At their stops, Deng raised his right hand and waved to crowds, then shook hands. To special
friends like Senator Henry Jackson in Seattle, Deng gave bear hugs. Oberdorfer wrote of Deng, “His eyes glisten with the combination of uncertainty and fascination that is characteristic more of youth than age.”
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When he received an honorary degree at Temple University in Philadelphia on January 31, Deng said in his speech, “Temple University is also noted for upholding academic freedom. This, I think, is an important factor for the thriving success of your university. Your conferring an honorary doctorate on me, a believer in Marxism-Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought, is ample proof of this. . . . The American people are a great people who, in the short span of two hundred years, brought into being gigantic forces of production and abundant material wealth, and made an outstanding contribution to human civilization. In the course of expanding production in the United States, a wealth of experience has been gained from which others can learn.”

In Atlanta, Deng captivated President Carter's home state and dominated the media for days even though he stayed there only twenty-three hours. Addressing a luncheon of 1,400 people, he complimented the historic leaders of Atlanta who had reconstructed the city after the destruction of the Civil War.
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He related the city's past experiences to China's current challenges: The American South had been considered a relatively backward area, “but it now has become a pacesetter. We in China are faced with the task of transforming our backwardness. . . . Your great encouragement has . . . increased our confidence.”
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Atlanta papers showed a picture of Deng's wife, Zhuo Lin, hugging Amy Carter and described her stay in Washington, when, accompanied by Mrs. Rosalynn Carter, she visited Amy's school, a children's hospital, and the pandas at the National Zoo.
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Woodcock recalls that in Houston, when Deng entered a replica of a spacecraft at the LBJ Space Center, “Deng was fascinated. . . . In that simulated vehicle, apparently coming in for the landing, he was so gleeful—I think he would have been willing to stay there all day.”
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And at a rodeo in Simonton, thirty-seven miles west of the city, Orville Schell reported, “Surrounded by his aides, ministers, and interpreters, pumping hands like a small-town pol, Deng . . . approaches the rail . . . a young girl on horseback gallops up and presents him with a ten-gallon hat. . . . The whistling, cheering crowd watches with delight as Deng theatrically dons his new hat. And in this one simple gesture, Deng seems not only to end thirty years of acrimony between China and America, but to give his own people permission to join him in imbibing American life and culture . . . arresting China's historic resistance to the West.”
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All over the United States, the photograph of Deng smiling beneath
his ten-gallon hat became the symbol of his visit. It signaled to the U.S. public that he was not only good-humored, but, after all, less like one of “those Communists” and more like “us.” The
Houston Post
headline read, “Deng avoids politics, goes Texan.”
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