Hard Choices

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

  The answer came as soon as the first formal speeches began. Dai and the other Chinese leaders were clearly working just as hard as Tim Geithner and I were to project a sense of normalcy and calm. They repeated their standard talking points about China’s harmonious rise and the importance of other countries staying out of their internal affairs—statements that, while familiar, took on a bit more edge in light of recent events. When it was my turn, I avoided the Chen issue and focused on Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the long list of other challenges on which we needed Chinese cooperation. But, I added, “a China that protects the rights of all its citizens will be a stronger and more prosperous nation, and of course, a stronger partner on behalf of our common goals.” That was as close as I got that morning to the current crisis.

  Following the speeches, we moved into smaller groups to dive into the agenda in more detail. Even if our minds often wandered to the drama unfolding in a hospital room across town, this was a chance to work on important business, and we couldn’t afford to waste it. So I sat through hours of presentations and discussions, asking questions and raising concerns.

  Kurt, meanwhile, was constantly excusing himself so he could monitor developments with Chen. The news wasn’t good. The embassy still couldn’t get through to his cell phone, and the Chinese were limiting physical access to the hospital. Protesters popped up outside, some wearing Chen-style dark glasses in homage to their hero, and Chinese security was getting increasingly anxious. None of that, however, was stopping Chen from talking with American journalists, who kept trumpeting his new desire to leave China and go to the United States and questioning whether we had done enough to help him.

  Back home, with election-year politics swirling, Washington was in an uproar. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner proclaimed himself “deeply disturbed” by reports that Chen was “pressured to leave the U.S. embassy against his will amid flimsy promises and possible threats of harm to his family.” Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate, went even further. He said it was “a dark day for freedom” and “a day of shame for the Obama Administration.” I don’t know if the critics were aware that we had done what Chen said he wanted every step of the way. The White House went into full damage-control mode. The guidance to us in Beijing was simple: Fix this.

  I told Kurt and Ambassador Locke to restart negotiations with Cui immediately and try to get Chen out of the country. That was easier said than done. The Chinese were absolutely incredulous that we would seek to reopen a deal that they hadn’t wanted in the first place. Cui just shook his head. He said that Kurt should “go back to Washington and resign.” Meanwhile Chen took his outreach to another level. Although he still had not spoken with anyone at the U.S. Embassy, he managed to call in to a Congressional hearing back in Washington. An activist close to Chen, Bob Fu, put his iPhone on speaker in front of Congressman Chris Smith’s committee. “I fear for my family’s lives,” Chen said, and then repeated his request to travel to the United States. It was like throwing fuel on the political fire.

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  It was time for me to step in. If Cui refused to negotiate, I would put aside the pantomime and raise the issue directly with Dai. Would our years of relationship-building pay off? On Friday I was scheduled to meet with President Hu and Premier Wen in the Great Hall of the People, and it was important to both Dai and me that those encounters go smoothly. It was in both our interests to get this resolved.

  On the morning of May 4, I met with Dai and thanked him for China honoring its side of the agreement. Then I explained the political firestorm back home and the difficulties it was causing us. Dai seemed surprised as I described the circus at the Congressional hearing. Nothing like that ever happened in China. What to do now? I offered what I hoped would be a face-saving solution. In the original understanding, Chen was supposed to go to school in China for a period of time and then continue his studies at an American university. Moving up that timetable wouldn’t mean a whole new deal; it would simply be a refinement of the existing agreement. Dai stared at me quietly for a long while, and I wondered what thoughts were racing behind his stoic demeanor. Slowly he turned to Cui, who was visibly agitated, and directed him to try to work out the details with Kurt.

  Heartened, but not yet confident, I headed off to the Great Hall of the People for my meetings with the senior leaders. True to my word, I did not raise Chen with Hu or later with Wen. I didn’t need to. In our discussions they appeared distracted but pleasant. We mostly talked in circles, dancing around the big issues facing the future of our relationship, while our aides were scurrying around trying to find a way out of our common dilemma. Hu and Wen were coming to the end of their ten-year term, and we too were headed into an election that could reshape our own government. But even if the players changed, the game would remain fundamentally the same.

  I left the Great Hall of the People and crossed Tiananmen Square to the National Museum of China for a dialogue about educational and cultural exchanges with State Councilor Liu Yandong, the highest-ranking woman in the Chinese government. The daughter of a former Vice Minister of Agriculture with deep ties in the Communist Party, Madame Liu rose to become one of only two women to hold a seat in the politburo. We had developed a warm relationship over the years, and I was glad to see a friendly face at a tense time.

  Beijing’s National Museum is enormous, designed to rival the Great Hall across the square, but its collection has never fully recovered from the removal of many of China’s most precious art and artifacts to Taiwan by the retreating forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in 1948. That’s the kind of wound to national pride that takes a long time to heal. As we walked up the soaring front steps, Kurt turned to me and asked, “Do you feel like we’ve done the right thing?” It was a reasonable question after so much high-stakes diplomacy and nerve-wracking twists and turns. I looked back at him and said, “There are a lot of decisions I make in this job that give me a pit in my stomach. I don’t have any of that here. This is a small price to pay to be the United States of America.” It was what Kurt needed to hear, and it happened to be the truth.

  Inside the museum we were met by a large group of Chinese and American children waving flags and offering greetings. Upstairs a chorus of Chinese and American students sang two songs of welcome, one in English, the other in Mandarin. Finally two exchange students stepped forward to speak about their experiences studying abroad. An articulate young Chinese woman talked in English about living in New York, an eye-opening, horizon-expanding, ambition-inspiring journey into an America she had only read about. The young American man was just as eloquent, describing his studies in China in Mandarin and how it had helped him better understand the relationship between our two countries.

  Occasionally, amid all the diplomatic pomp and circumstance of these summits, with their prepared speeches and choreographed set pieces, an actual human moment breaks through and reminds us of what we’re doing there in the first place. This was one of those moments. Listening to the students express so much empathy and excitement, I thought about all the effort we had put into what some critics dismiss as the “softer” side of diplomacy: the educational exchanges, cultural tours, and scientific collaboration. I had made it a priority to send more American students to China, with the goal of 100,000 over four years, in part because I believed it would help convince wary Chinese officials that we were serious about expanding engagement with them. These programs may garner few headlines, but they have the potential to influence the next generation of U.S. and Chinese leaders in a way no other initiative can match. If these students were any indication, it was working. I looked across the table at Liu, Cui, and the others, and I knew they could feel it too.

  When Cui sat down with Kurt and his team after lunch to work out the next moves in the Chen drama, his tone was noticeably different. Despite our differences, we were working together to save the relationship and the future those two students r
epresented. Afterward Kurt and Jake raced to put down on paper a short and carefully worded statement that would not acknowledge an explicit deal but would make it clear that an understanding had been reached. Chen, as a Chinese citizen in good standing, would apply for a visa to the United States, and it would be processed expeditiously by both sides. He could then take his family and begin his studies at New York University.

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  Back at Diaoyutai, Tim Geithner and I joined our counterparts onstage for the closing public remarks of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. In my comments I reviewed the substantive ground that had been covered over the past few days. I noted that there had been a number of strong disagreements, but that four years of hard work had allowed us to develop a level of trust durable enough to withstand disruptions and distractions. I quoted a bit of Taoist wisdom that roughly translates as “To lead, one must see the larger picture.” We had tried to do that in this crisis and not lose sight of either the strategic concerns or our core values. Looking ahead, I told the audience, “We need to build a resilient relationship that allows both of us to thrive and meet our regional and global responsibilities without unhealthy competition, rivalry, or conflict. Zero-sum thinking will lead only to negative-sum results.”

  As a rule Chinese leaders refuse to take questions at these closing “press conferences,” so after the formal statements, Tim Geithner and I drove back to our hotel for our first proper session with the world media since arriving in Beijing. The first question, from Matt Lee of the Associated Press, was predictable. “Madam Secretary, it won’t surprise you, I think, to get the questions that you’re about to get from me, which all have to do with the elephant in the room that’s been dogging us,” he began. I smiled at his mixed metaphor: “The elephant that has been dogging us. That’s good—a good start, Matt.” Laughter broke the tension in the room, just a bit. He pressed ahead: “How did the Chinese officials that you spoke to, the senior leadership, respond to your appeals on [Chen’s] behalf? Are you confident that they will allow him to leave the country to go to the States with his family so that he can study? And how do you respond to critics at home and elsewhere who say that the administration has really bungled this?”

  It was finally time to put this drama to rest once and for all. I began with the carefully prepared text we had agreed to with the Chinese and then added a few thoughts of my own:

  Let me start by saying that from the beginning, all of our efforts with Mr. Chen have been guided by his choices and our values. And I’m pleased that today our ambassador has spoken with him again, our Embassy staff and our doctor had a chance to meet with him, and he confirms that he and his family now want to go to the United States so he can pursue his studies. In that regard, we are also encouraged by the official statement issued today by the Chinese Government confirming that he can apply to travel abroad for this purpose. Over the course of the day, progress has been made to help him have the future that he wants, and we will be staying in touch with him as this process moves forward. But let me also add, this is not just about well-known activists. It’s about the human rights and aspirations of more than a billion people here in China and billions more around the world. And it’s about the future of this great nation and all nations. We will continue engaging with the Chinese Government at the highest levels in putting these concerns at the heart of our diplomacy.

  As the cameras snapped away and the reporters scribbled in their notebooks, I felt good about this resolution. After the press conference I invited my team to a well-deserved celebratory dinner of Peking duck and other Chinese delicacies. Kurt and Harold recounted some of their more absurd misadventures over the past week, and we finally felt comfortable relaxing and laughing. The next day, I headed to the airport and boarded a flight to Dhaka, Bangladesh.

  Chen was still in his hospital room, and we all knew there was a real chance this second deal would unravel just like the first. None of us would be truly comfortable until he was safely on American soil. Based on the understanding with the Chinese, that could take a number of weeks. But the Chinese had held up their side of the bargain throughout the crisis, and I believed they would do so again. Sure enough, on May 19 Chen and his family arrived in the United States to begin his fellowship at New York University.

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  I was immensely proud of my team and everyone at the embassy in Beijing. This was about much more than one man. We had spent four years preparing for a crisis like this—building up the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and other diplomatic mechanisms, developing habits of trust between counterparts up and down the chain, grounding the U.S.-China relationship in a framework of mutual interest and respect, while also staking out clear markers about human rights and democratic values. It had been a delicate tightrope walk from the start, but now I felt we had proof that it had been worth it. We also had reason to believe our relationship was strong enough to withstand future crises. Given our different visions, values, and interests, they were inevitable.

  One of the primary goals of the pivot plan was to increase our active involvement in Asian affairs in a way that advanced our interests in a more open democratic and prosperous region, without weakening our efforts to build a positive relationship with China. The frictions in our relationship are a reflection of both disagreements over the issues at hand and very different perceptions of how the world, or at least Asia, should work. The United States wants a future of shared prosperity and shared responsibilities for peace and security. The only way to build that future is to develop mechanisms for and habits of cooperation and to urge China toward greater openness and freedom. That’s why we oppose China’s suppression of internet freedom, political activists like Chen, and the Tibetan and Uighur Muslim minorities. It’s why we want peaceful resolutions between China and its neighbors over their territorial claims.

  The Chinese believe we don’t appreciate how far they’ve come and how much they’ve changed, or how deep and constant is their fear of internal conflicts and disintegration. They resent criticism by outsiders. They claim the Chinese people are more free than they have ever been, free to work, to move, to save and accumulate wealth. They are rightly proud of moving more people out of poverty faster than any other nation in history. They believe our relationship should be formed on mutual self-interest and noninvolvement in each other’s affairs.

  When we disagree, they believe it’s because we fear China’s rise on the world stage and want to contain it. We believe disagreement is a normal part of our relationship and think if we can manage our differences it will strengthen our cooperation. We have no interest in containing China. But we do insist that China play by the rules that bind all nations.

  In other words, the jury’s still out. China has some hard choices to make, and so do we. We should follow a time-tested strategy: Work for the best outcome, but plan for something less. And stick to our values. As I told Kurt and Jake on that first tense night when Chen was pleading for refuge, our defense of universal human rights is one of America’s greatest sources of strength. The image of Chen, blind and injured, seeking through that dangerous night for the one place he knew stood for freedom and opportunity—the embassy of the United States—reminds us of our responsibility to make sure our country remains the beacon for dissidents and dreamers all over the world.

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  Burma: The Lady and the Generals

  She was thin, even frail, but with unmistakable inner strength. There was a quiet dignity about her, and the coiled intensity of a vibrant mind inside a long-imprisoned body. She exhibited qualities I had glimpsed before in other former political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela and Václav Havel. Like them, she carried the hopes of a nation on her shoulders.

  The first time I met Aung San Suu Kyi, on December 1, 2011, we were both wearing white. It seemed like an auspicious coincidence. After so many years of reading and thinking about this ce
lebrated Burmese dissident, we were finally face-to-face. She had been released from house arrest, and I had traveled thousands of miles to talk with her about the prospects of democratic reform in her authoritarian country. We sat down for a private dinner on the terrace of the chief U.S. diplomat’s residence in Rangoon, a lovely old colonial home on Inya Lake. I felt as if we had known each other for a lifetime, even though we had just met.

  I had a lot of questions. She had just as many. After years as an icon of the pro-democracy movement, she was preparing for her first experience with actual democracy. How does one move from protest to politics? What is it like to run for office and put yourself on the line in a whole new way? The conversation was easy and open, and soon we were chatting, strategizing, and laughing like old friends.

  We both knew it was a delicate moment. Her country, which the ruling generals called Myanmar and the dissidents called Burma, was taking the first tentative steps toward momentous change. (For years our government maintained a strict official policy of using only the name Burma, but eventually some began using the two names interchangeably. In this book I use Burma, as I did at the time.) The country could easily fall backward into bloodshed and repression, as had happened before. Yet if we could help chart the right course, the prospects for progress were better than at any time in a generation.