On China (48 page)

Normalization emerged as a first step toward a common global policy. From the time of the secret visit in July 1971, the Chinese conditions for normalization had been explicit and unchanging: withdrawal of all American forces from Taiwan; ending the defense treaty with Taiwan; and establishing diplomatic relations with China exclusively with the government in Beijing. It had been part of the Chinese position in the Shanghai Communiqué. Two Presidents—Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford—had agreed to these conditions. Nixon had indicated he would realize them in his second term. Both Nixon and Ford had emphasized America’s concern for a peaceful solution to the issue, including continuation of some security assistance for Taiwan. They had not been able to fulfill these promises because of the impact of Watergate.

In an unusual act of nonpartisan foreign policy, President Carter early in his term reaffirmed all the undertakings regarding Taiwan that Nixon had made to Zhou in February 1972. In 1978, he put forward a specific formula for normalization to enable both sides to maintain their established principles: reaffirmation of the principles accepted by Nixon and Ford; an American statement stressing the country’s commitment to peaceful change; Chinese acquiescence to some American arms sales to Taiwan. Carter advanced these ideas personally in a conversation with the Chinese ambassador, Chai Zemin, in which he threatened that, in the absence of American arms sales, Taiwan would be obliged to resort to developing nuclear weapons—as if the United States had no influence over Taiwan’s plans or actions.
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In the end, normalization came about when Carter supplied a deadline by inviting Deng to visit Washington. Deng agreed with unspecified arms sales to Taiwan and did not contradict an American declaration that Washington expected the ultimate solution of the Taiwan issue to be peaceful—even though China had established an extended record that it would undertake no formal obligation to that effect. Beijing’s position remained, as Deng had stressed to Brzezinski, that “the liberation of Taiwan is an internal affair of China in which no foreign country has the right to interfere.”
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Normalization meant that the American Embassy would move from Taipei to Beijing; a diplomat from Beijing would replace Taipei’s representative in Washington. In response the U.S. Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in April 1979, which expressed the American concerns regarding the future as a binding law for Americans. It could not, of course, bind China.

This balance between American and Chinese imperatives illustrates why ambiguity is sometimes the lifeblood of diplomacy. Much of normalization has been sustained for forty years by a series of ambiguities. But it cannot do so indefinitely. Wise statesmanship on both sides is needed to move the process forward.

As Deng moved from exhortation to implementation, he saw to it that China would not wait passively for American decisions. Wherever possible—especially in Southeast Asia—he would create the political framework he was advocating.

Where Mao had summoned foreign leaders to his residence like an emperor, Deng adopted the opposite approach—touring Southeast Asia, the United States, and Japan and practicing his own brand of highly visible, blunt, and occasionally hectoring diplomacy. In 1978 and 1979, Deng undertook a series of journeys to change China’s image abroad from revolutionary challenger to fellow victim of Soviet and Vietnamese geopolitical designs. China had been on the other side during the Vietnam War. In Thailand and Malaysia, China had previously encouraged revolution among the overseas Chinese and minority populations.
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All this was now subordinated to dealing with the immediate threat.

In an interview with
Time
magazine in February 1979, Deng advertised the Chinese strategic design to a large public: “If we really want to be able to place curbs on the polar bear, the only realistic thing for us is to unite. If we only depend on the strength of the U.S., it is not enough. If we only depend on the strength of Europe, it is not enough. We are an insignificant, poor country, but if we unite, well, it will then carry weight.”
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Throughout his trips, Deng stressed China’s relative backwardness and its desire to acquire technology and expertise from advanced industrial nations. But he maintained that China’s lack of development did not alter its determination to resist Soviet and Vietnamese expansion, if necessary by force and alone.

Deng’s overseas travel—and his repeated invocations of China’s poverty—were striking departures from the tradition of Chinese statecraft. Few Chinese rulers had ever gone abroad. (Of course, since in the traditional conception they ruled all under heaven, there technically was no “abroad” to go to.) Deng’s willingness openly to emphasize China’s backwardness and need to learn from others stood in sharp contrast to the aloofness of China’s Emperors and officialdom in dealing with foreigners. Never had a Chinese ruler proclaimed to foreigners a need for foreign goods. The Qing court had accepted foreign innovations in limited doses (for example, in its welcoming attitude to Jesuit astronomers and mathematicians) but had always insisted that foreign trade was an expression of Chinese goodwill, not a necessity for China. Mao, too, had stressed self-reliance, even at the price of impoverishment and isolation.

Deng began his travels in Japan. The occasion was the ratification of the treaty by which normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China had been negotiated. Deng’s strategic design required reconciliation, not simply normalization, so that Japan could help isolate the Soviet Union and Vietnam.

For this objective Deng was prepared to bring to a close half a century of suffering inflicted on China by Japan. Deng conducted himself exuberantly, declaring “My heart is full of joy,” and hugging his Japanese counterpart, a gesture for which his host could have found few precedents in his own society or, for that matter, in China’s. Deng made no attempt to hide China’s economic lag: “If you have an ugly face, it is no use pretending that you are handsome.” When asked to sign a visitors’ book, he wrote an unprecedented appreciation of Japanese accomplishments: “We learn from and pay respect to the Japanese people, who are great, diligent, brave and intelligent.”
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In November 1978, Deng visited Southeast Asia, traveling to Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. He branded Vietnam the “Cuba of the East” and spoke of the newly signed Soviet-Vietnamese treaty as a threat to world peace.
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In Thailand on November 8, 1978, Deng stressed that the “security and peace of Asia, the Pacific and the whole world are threatened” by the Soviet-Vietnamese treaty: “This treaty is not directed against China alone. . . . It is a very important worldwide Soviet scheme. You may believe that the meaning of the treaty is to encircle China. I have told friendly countries that China is not afraid of being encircled. It has a most important meaning for Asia and the Pacific. The security and peace of Asia, the Pacific and the whole world are threatened.”
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On his visit to Singapore, Deng met a kindred spirit in the extraordinary Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and glimpsed a vision of China’s possible future—a majority-Chinese society prospering under what Deng would later describe admiringly as “strict administration” and “good public order.”
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At the time, China was still desperately poor, and its own “public order” had barely survived the Cultural Revolution. Lee Kuan Yew recounted a memorable exchange:

Lee paid tribute to Deng’s pragmatism and willingness to learn from experience. Lee also used the opportunity to express some of Southeast Asia’s concerns that might not filter through the Chinese bureaucratic and diplomatic screen:

In the event, Lee proved correct. The Southeast Asian countries, with the exception of Singapore, behaved with great caution in confronting either the Soviet Union or Vietnam. Nevertheless, Deng achieved his fundamental objectives: his many public statements constituted a warning of a possible Chinese effort to remedy the situation. And they were bound to be noted by the United States, which was a key building block for Deng’s design. That strategic design needed a more firmly defined relationship with America.

Deng’s visit to the United States was announced to celebrate the normalization of relations between the two countries and to inaugurate a common strategy that, elaborating on the Shanghai Communiqué, applied primarily to the Soviet Union.

It also demonstrated a special skill of Chinese diplomacy: to create the impression of support by countries that have not in fact agreed to that role or even been asked to play it. The pattern began in the crisis over the offshore islands twenty years earlier. Mao had begun the 1958 shelling of Quemoy and Matsu three weeks after Khrushchev’s tense visit to Beijing, creating the impression that Moscow had agreed to Beijing’s actions in advance, which was not the case. Eisenhower had gone so far as to accuse Khrushchev of helping to instigate the crisis.

Following the same tactic, Deng preceded the war with Vietnam with a high-profile visit to the United States. In neither case did China ask for assistance for its impending military endeavor. Khrushchev was apparently not informed of the 1958 operation and resented being faced with the risk of nuclear war; Washington was informed of the 1979 invasion after Deng’s arrival in America but gave no explicit support and limited the U.S. role to intelligence sharing and diplomatic coordination. In both cases, Beijing succeeded in creating the impression that its actions enjoyed the blessing of one superpower, thus discouraging the other superpower from intervening. In that subtle and daring strategy, the Soviet Union in 1958 had been powerless to prevent the Chinese attack on the offshore islands; with respect to Vietnam, it was left guessing as to what had been agreed during Deng’s visit and was likely to assume the worst from its point of view.

In that sense, Deng’s visit to the United States was a kind of shadow play, one of whose purposes was to intimidate the Soviet Union. Deng’s week-long tour of the United States was part diplomatic summit, part business trip, part barnstorming political campaign, and part psychological warfare for the Third Vietnam War. The trip included stops in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Houston, and Seattle, and produced scenes unimaginable under Mao. At a state dinner at the White House on January 29, the leader of “Red China” dined with the heads of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and General Motors. At a gala event at the Kennedy Center, the diminutive Vice Premier shook hands with members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.
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Deng played to the crowd at a rodeo and barbecue in Simonton, Texas, donning a ten-gallon hat and riding in a stagecoach.

Throughout the visit, Deng stressed China’s need to acquire foreign technology and develop its economy. At his request, he toured manufacturing and technology facilities, including a Ford assembly plant in Hapeville, Georgia; the Hughes Tool Company in Houston (where Deng inspected drill bits for use in offshore oil exploration); and the Boeing plant outside Seattle. On his arrival in Houston, Deng avowed his desire to “learn about your advanced experience in the petroleum industry and other fields.”
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Deng offered a hopeful assessment of Sino-U. S. relations, proclaiming his desire to “get to know all about American life” and “absorb everything of benefit to us.”
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At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Deng lingered in the space shuttle flight simulator. One news report captured the scene:

This was worlds away from the Qing Emperor’s studied indifference to Macartney’s gifts and promises of trade or Mao’s rigid insistence on economic autarky. At his meeting with President Carter on January 29, Deng explained China’s Four Modernizations policy, put forward by Zhou in his last public appearance, which promised to modernize the fields of agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense. All this was subordinate to the overriding purpose of Deng’s trip: to develop a de facto alliance between the United States and China. He summed up: