Hard Choices

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

  Dai and I hit it off right away, and we talked often over the years. Sometimes I’d be subjected to long lectures about everything the United States was doing wrong in Asia, laced with sarcasm but always delivered with a smile. At other times the two of us talked deeply and personally about the need to put the U.S.-China relationship on a sound footing for the sake of future generations. On one of my early visits to Beijing, Dai presented me with thoughtful personal gifts for Chelsea and my mother, which was above and beyond the normal diplomatic protocol. The next time he came to Washington, I reciprocated with a gift for his only granddaughter, which seemed to please him very much. In an early meeting, he had pulled out a small photograph of the baby girl and showed it to me, saying, “This is what we’re in it for.” That sentiment struck a chord with me. It was concern for the welfare of children that got me into public service in the first place. As Secretary of State I had the chance to make the world a little safer and life a little better for children in America and across the globe, including in China. I viewed it as the opportunity and the responsibility of a lifetime. That Dai shared my passion became the basis of an enduring bond between us.

  Foreign Minister Yang had risen up the ranks of the diplomatic corps, starting as an interpreter. His superb command of English enabled us to have long, sometimes spirited conversations during our many meetings and phone calls. He rarely dropped his careful diplomatic persona, but I could occasionally glimpse the real person behind it. Once he told me that, as a child growing up in Shanghai, he sat in an unheated classroom, shivering, his hands too cold to hold a pen. His journey from the freezing schoolhouse all the way to the Foreign Ministry was a source of his great personal pride in China’s progress. He was an unapologetic nationalist, and we had our share of tense exchanges, especially about difficult topics like the South China Sea, North Korea, and territorial disputes with Japan.

  Late one night, in one of our last discussions in 2012, Yang started waxing on about China’s many superlative achievements, including its athletic dominance. It was just about a month after the London Olympics, and I gently pointed out that America, in fact, had won the most medals of any country. Yang, in turn, chalked up China’s “decline in fortunes” at the Olympics to the absence of the injured basketball star Yao Ming. He also joked that there should be a “diplomacy Olympics” with events like “miles traveled”; that would net the United States at least one more medal.

  In my first conversation with Yang in February 2009, he brought up a topic I didn’t expect that was clearly bothering him. The Chinese were preparing to host a major international exposition in May 2010, like the world’s fairs of an earlier era. Every country in the world was responsible for building a pavilion on the exposition grounds to showcase their national culture and traditions. Only two nations were failing to participate, Yang told me: tiny Andorra and the United States. The Chinese saw that as a sign of disrespect, and also of American decline. I was surprised to learn that we weren’t pulling our weight and pledged to Yang that I would make sure the United States was well represented.

  I soon discovered that the USA Pavilion was out of money, way behind schedule, and unlikely ever to be completed unless things changed dramatically. This was not a good way to project American power and values in Asia. So I made it a personal priority to get our pavilion built, which meant raising money and support from the private sector in record time.

  We pulled it off, and in May 2010, I joined millions of other visitors from around the world to tour the expo. The USA Pavilion showcased American products and stories that illustrated some of our most cherished national values: perseverance, innovation, and diversity. What struck me most were the American students who volunteered to serve as hosts and guides. They represented the full spectrum of the American people, from every walk of life and background, and they all spoke Mandarin. Many Chinese visitors were stunned to hear Americans speak their language so enthusiastically. They stopped to talk, asked questions, told jokes, and swapped stories. It was another reminder that personal contacts can do as much or more for the U.S.-China relationship than most diplomatic encounters or choreographed summits.

  After my discussions with Dai and Yang on that February 2009 visit, I had the opportunity to meet separately with President Hu and Premier Wen. It was the first of at least a dozen encounters over the years. The senior leaders were more scripted than Dai or Yang and less comfortable in a freewheeling discussion. The higher you went up the chain, the higher the premium the Chinese put on predictability, formality, and respectful decorum. They didn’t want any surprises. Appearances mattered. With me, they were careful and polite, even a little wary. They were studying me, just as I was studying them.

  Hu was gracious, expressing his appreciation for my decision to make such an early visit to China. He was the most powerful man in China, but he lacked the personal authority of predecessors such as Deng Xiaoping or Jiang Zemin. Hu seemed to me more like an aloof chairman of the board than a hands-on CEO. How in control he really was of the entire sprawling Communist Party apparatus was an open question, especially when it came to the military.

  “Grandpa Wen,” as the Premier (the #2 official) was called, worked hard to present a kindly, soft-spoken image to China and the world. But in private he could be quite pointed, especially when he was arguing that the United States was responsible for the global financial crisis or when he brushed aside criticism of China’s policies. He was never combative, but he was more cutting than his public persona might have suggested.

  In my early meetings with these leaders, I proposed making the U.S.-China economic dialogue started by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson a strategic dialogue as well, to cover a much wider range of issues and bring together more experts and officials from across our two governments. This wasn’t an excuse for the State Department to elbow into the conversation or to set up a high-profile debating society. I knew that regular talks, in essence a high-level steering committee for the relationship, would expand our cooperation into new areas and build greater trust and resiliency. Policymakers on both sides would get to know each other and become used to working together. Open lines of communication would reduce the likelihood that a misunderstanding would escalate tensions. Future disputes would be less likely to derail everything else we needed to do together.

  I had discussed this idea with Hank Paulson’s successor at Treasury, Tim Geithner, over lunch at the State Department in early February 2009. I had gotten to know and like Tim when he was President of the New York Federal Reserve. He had extensive experience in Asia and even spoke a little Mandarin, making him an ideal partner in our engagement with China. To his credit, Tim did not see my proposal for the expanded dialogue as an intrusion on Treasury’s turf—turf, of course, being a precious Washington commodity. He saw it as I did: as a chance to combine our departments’ strengths, especially at a time when the global financial crisis was blurring the line between economics and security more than ever. If the Chinese agreed, Tim and I would chair the new combined dialogue together.

  In Beijing I was prepared for reluctance, even rejection. After all, the Chinese were not eager to discuss sensitive political topics. Yet it turned out they were also eager for more high-level contact with the United States, and were seeking what President Hu Jintao called a “positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship.” In time our Strategic and Economic Dialogue would become a model we replicated with emerging powers around the world, from India to South Africa and Brazil.

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  For decades, the guiding doctrine of Chinese foreign policy was Deng Xiaoping’s counsel, “Coolly observe, calmly deal with things, hold your position, hide your capacities, bide your time, accomplish things where possible.” Deng, who ruled China after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, believed that China was not yet strong enough to assert itself on the world stage, and his “hide and bide” strategy helped avoid conflict with neighbors as China’s economy took o
ff. Bill and I met Deng briefly on his historic tour of the United States in 1979. I had never met a Chinese leader before and closely observed him as he casually interacted with the American guests at a reception and dinner at the Georgia Governor’s Mansion. He was engaging and made an excellent impression, both personally and in his willingness to begin opening his country up to reform.

  By 2009, however, some officials in China, especially in the military, chafed at this posture of restraint. They thought that the United States, long the most powerful nation in the Asia-Pacific, was receding from the region but still determined to block China’s rise as a great power in its own right. It was, they thought, time for a more assertive approach. They were emboldened by the financial crisis of 2008 that weakened the U.S. economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that sapped American attention and resources, and a rising current of nationalism among the Chinese people. And so China started making more aggressive moves in Asia, testing how hard it could push.

  In November 2009, President Obama received a noticeably lukewarm reception during his visit to Beijing. The Chinese insisted on stage-managing most of his appearances, refused to give any ground on issues such as human rights or currency valuation, and offered pointed lectures on America’s budget problems. The New York Times described the joint press conference between President Obama and President Hu as “stilted”—so much so that it was parodied on Saturday Night Live. Many observers wondered whether we were seeing a new phase in the relationship, with an ascendant and assertive China no longer hiding its resources and enhanced military capabilities, moving away from “hide and bide” and toward “show and tell.”

  The most dramatic arena for Chinese assertiveness was at sea. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan all have coasts on the South and East China Seas. For generations they have jousted over competing territorial claims in the area, over strings of reefs, rocks, outcroppings, and mostly uninhabited islands. In the south, China and Vietnam clashed violently over contested islands in the 1970s and 1980s. China tangled with the Philippines in the 1990s over other islands. In the East China Sea, a chain of eight uninhabited islands, known as the Senkakus to the Japanese and the Diaoyus to the Chinese, have been the subject of a long and heated dispute that, as of 2014, continues to simmer and threatens to boil over at any time. In November 2013, China declared an “air defense identification zone” over much of the East China Sea, including the disputed islands, and demanded that all international air traffic adhere to its regulations. The United States and our allies refused to recognize this move and continued to fly military planes through what we still consider international airspace.

  These conflicts may not be new, but the stakes have risen. As Asia’s economy has grown, so has the trade flowing through the region. At least half the world’s merchant tonnage passes through the South China Sea, including many shipments headed to or from the United States. Discoveries of new offshore energy reserves and surrounding fisheries have made the waters around otherwise unremarkable clumps of rocks into potential treasure troves. Old rivalries heightened by the prospect of new riches make for a combustible recipe.

  Throughout 2009 and 2010 China’s neighbors watched with increasing alarm as Beijing accelerated a naval buildup and asserted its claim to wide swaths of water, islands, and energy reserves. These actions were the opposite of what former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (and later president of the World Bank) Robert Zoellick had hoped for when he urged China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in a much-noted speech in 2005. Instead China was becoming what I called a “selective stakeholder,” picking and choosing when to act like a responsible great power and when to assert the right to impose its will on its smaller neighbors.

  In March 2009, just two months into the Obama Administration, five Chinese ships confronted a lightly armed U.S. naval vessel, the Impeccable, about seventy-five miles from the Chinese island province of Hainan. The Chinese demanded that the Americans leave what they claimed were exclusive territorial waters. The crew of the Impeccable responded that they were in international waters and had a right to free navigation. Chinese sailors threw pieces of wood in the water to block the ship’s path. The Americans responded by spraying a fire hose at the Chinese, some of whom stripped to their underwear after being doused. The scene could almost be considered comical if it didn’t represent a potentially dangerous confrontation. Over the next two years, similar standoffs at sea between China and Japan, China and Vietnam, and China and the Philippines threatened to spiral out of control. Something had to be done.

  China prefers to resolve territorial disputes with its neighbors bilaterally, or one-on-one, because in those situations its relative power is greater. In multilateral settings where smaller nations could band together, its sway decreased. Not surprisingly, most of the rest of the region preferred the multilateral approach. They believed there were too many overlapping claims and interests to try to settle them in a patchwork, one-off fashion. Getting all the relevant players in the same room and giving them all a chance to express their views—especially the smaller countries—was the best way to move toward a comprehensive solution.

  I agreed with this approach. The United States has no territorial claims in the South or East China Seas, we don’t take sides in such disputes, and we oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo. We have an abiding interest in protecting freedom of navigation, maritime commerce, and international law. And we have treaty obligations to support Japan and the Philippines.

  My concerns escalated when I was in Beijing for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in May 2010 and for the first time heard Chinese leaders describe the country’s territorial claims in the South China Sea as a “core interest” alongside traditional hot-button topics like Taiwan and Tibet. They warned that China would not tolerate outside interference. Later the meetings were disrupted when a Chinese admiral stood up and launched into an angry rant accusing the United States of trying to encircle China and suppress its rise. This was highly unusual in a carefully choreographed summit, and—although I assumed the admiral had gotten at least a tacit go-ahead from his military and party bosses—it appeared that some of the Chinese diplomats were as surprised as I was.

  The confrontations in the South China Sea in the first two years of the Obama Administration reinforced my belief that our strategy in Asia must include a significant effort to upgrade the region’s multilateral institutions. The available venues just weren’t effective enough for resolving disputes between nations or mobilizing action. For the smaller nations, it could feel like the Wild West: a frontier without the rule of law, where the weak were at the mercy of the strong. Our goal was not just to help defuse flash points like the South or East China Sea but also to nurture an international system of rules and organizations in the Asia-Pacific that could help avoid future conflicts and bring some order and long-term stability to the region—something that began to approximate what Europe had built.

  On the flight home from the talks in Beijing, I took stock with my team. I thought China had overplayed its hand. Instead of using the period of our perceived absence and the economic crisis to cement good relations with its neighbors, it had become more aggressive toward them, and that shift had unnerved the rest of the region. When times are good with few threats to security or prosperity, nations are less likely to see the appeal of expensive defense alliances, strong international rules and norms, and robust multilateral institutions. But when conflict unsettles the status quo, these agreements and protections become a lot more attractive, especially to smaller nations.

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  Perhaps there was an opportunity to be found amid all these troubling developments. One presented itself just two months later at an ASEAN regional forum in Vietnam. I touched down in Hanoi on July 22, 2010, and went to a lunch marking the fifteenth anniversary of normalized diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States.

  I vividly remembered the day in July 1995
when Bill made the historic announcement in the East Room of the White House, flanked by Vietnam veterans, including Senators John Kerry and John McCain. It was the beginning of a new era—healing old wounds, settling questions about prisoners of war, and charting a path of improved economic and strategic relations. In 2000, we went to Hanoi, the first visit by a U.S. President. We were prepared to find resentment, even hostility, but as we drove into the city, large crowds lined the streets to welcome us. Throngs of students, who had grown up knowing only peace between our nations, gathered at Hanoi National University to hear Bill speak. Everywhere we went we felt the warmth and hospitality of the Vietnamese people, a reflection of the goodwill that had developed between our countries in the span of a single generation and a powerful testament to the fact that the past does not have to determine the future.

  Back in Hanoi as Secretary of State, I marveled at how far Vietnam had come since that visit and how our relations continued to improve. Our annual trade had grown to nearly $20 billion in 2010 from less than $250 million before relations were normalized, and it was expanding rapidly every year. Vietnam also presented a unique—though challenging—strategic opportunity. On the one hand, it remained an authoritarian country with a poor record on human rights, especially press freedoms. On the other, it was steadily taking steps to open up its economy and trying to claim a larger role in the region. Over the years Vietnamese officials had told me that, despite the war we had fought against them, they admired and liked America.