1999

by Richard Nixon

  Like Japan’s Yoshida, Deng did not feel threatened by able men under him in government. Instead he considered it the ultimate triumph for a leader’s policies to be carried on after his death by well-prepared successors. He is still in good health today. But as an awareness of his own mortality looms larger, Deng has come to the paradoxical realization that the key to a leader’s immortality is to be humble enough to recognize that other men can, and must, fill his shoes. Deng will be remembered for many remarkable achievements during his career. But history has few examples of strong leaders who face up to their mortality instead of being forced to do so by others. His simple statement “I am stepping down before my mind becomes confused” is an eloquent demonstration of his greatness.

  The ouster of Hu Yaobang, his lifelong friend, must have caused Deng great anguish. Zhao was his second choice, but he is an extraordinarily good one. He is a tough, intelligent economist and technocrat, but he is also colorful, even charismatic. At a cocktail reception during last year’s party congress he was assuring Western journalists that the impeccably tailored Western-style suits he and his colleagues were wearing were not imported. To prove his point he grabbed the lapel of a top official standing nearby and turned it over so that everyone could see the label that said “Made in China.”

  Zhao has enthusiastically embraced Deng’s reforms and has even taken some promising new steps forward, giving small factories more freedom, permitting peasants to buy and sell their government land leases, and, probably most important, adopting new guidelines for keeping the Communist Party out of day-to-day government. Many antireform hard-liners have been put out to pasture. But others who believe that Deng’s pace of reform was too quick remain. Until Zhao fully consolidates his power he will continue to look to Deng to mediate disputes with conservatives. The unanswered question is who is the one among many who has the strength and vision to replace Deng when he finally leaves the scene. In a communist country only one can be the leader. Whether that leader is Zhao will depend upon how successfully his skills as a political tactician match those he has already exhibited as an economic one.

  But it remains highly doubtful that China, having come this far along Deng’s promising new road, will ever turn back. Like people, nations can learn from their mistakes. China embarked on its experiment in partial economic freedom only after its experiment in total economic planning exploded, or rather sputtered out, in its face. During Deng’s years as a disciple of Chou and Mao, China was dead in the international water, humiliatingly dependent on Soviet largesse. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Deng realized that the people of China were being kept from reaching their potential at home and China was being kept from reaching its potential on the world stage. One of Mao’s and Chou’s greatest legacies is that they finally brought China into the twentieth century by turning it toward the West. The legacy of their successor will be that he unbound China from the ideological strictures of the past and prepared it for international leadership in the future.

  Deng came to power as an old man with young ideas. His principal rivals were not the younger men below him but the other octogenarians around him. They feared the end of the China they knew; he welcomed and encouraged it. They cherished the ideals of the revolution in which they and he had fought; he knew that those ideals would turn to ashes in a billion hungry mouths unless fundamental changes were made in the Chinese system. In the sixteenth century a French scholar nearing the end of his life wrote despairingly, “If youth but knew, and old age only could.” At eighty-four, Deng knew, and Deng could. The combination was explosive, and it has sent a fifth of the world’s people hurtling toward new prosperity and world leadership.

  Too many naive observers in the West persist in looking at Deng and seeing a Chinese Thomas Paine, a democratic revolutionary whose long-range plan is to bring an end to communist rule. Deng’s actions have indeed been dramatic, even inspiring. But Deng is a reformer, not a revolutionary. As a communist he does not want a capitalist China or a democratic China, but he is not a prisoner of his ideology. Above all he is a nationalist who wants a strong China that has the economic and military power it needs to pursue foreign and trade policies that will make it a superpower in the twenty-first century.

  While Deng’s explicit goal was not more political freedom, if the economic reforms work political change could follow. The change must be gradual and sure—fast enough to keep up with the people’s expectations, but not so fast that the existing political structure cannot cope. Deng himself said it best: “If I could enable people to improve their lives gradually, then I think the policy itself is a sure guarantee of its continuity.” The key to success is time. Given enough time, what today seems so new to the Chinese will take on the appearance of normalcy; younger leaders who have been exposed to the reforms, and who benefit from them, will become advocates of continuing and expanding them. The success of Deng’s vision will give freedom a good name. China will realize that it has nothing to fear from freedom and everything to gain.

  For Deng’s reforms to survive, the United States and the West must play a central role. China’s economic development depends upon a stable world economy and consistent, friendly relationships with its trading partners in the industrialized world. If the West lets China down—by slowing the pace of its investments in China, by lashing out at China in the form of protectionism, or by failing to pursue enlightened foreign policies in the Pacific region—China’s economy will be harmed, and antireform elements within China will be helped.

  The concern over the Soviet threat which brought us together in 1972 may not be enough to keep us together in 1999. If that is our only motive for friendly relations we leave our fate in the hands of the Soviets. Our common security interests brought us together. If the threat recedes, our common economic interests can keep us together. If we want China to sustain its orientation toward the West we must give the Chinese a sustained economic stake in good relations with the West. Beijing’s pro-reformers must be able to show their skeptical colleagues that China will profit from Deng’s new policies more than it would from a return to the Soviet model and the Soviet fold.

  The Sino–U.S. relationship will last into the twenty-first century, and strengthen with each passing year, if the United States proves to be a dependable friend. Our relationship is healthy and strong, but we must work to keep it that way. It cannot withstand being neglected or taken for granted. But in surveying all we have accomplished in the first sixteen years, we can be justifiably hopeful about what remains to be done.

  Before 1972, there was no trade between the United States and China, no tourism, no academic exchanges, no technological and cultural exchanges, no military relations. Today, bilateral trade is about $10 billion a year. Over 250 U.S. companies have offices in China, and Americans have invested $1.5 billion there. Of the thirty thousand Chinese students now studying abroad, fifteen thousand are in the United States. A quarter of a million American tourists visit China each year. A modest program of military relations, including some sales of defensive arms to China, is under way. Young American diplomats now covet postings in Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton, and young Chinese diplomats cherish assignments in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles.

  Through these and other developments, China is coming to know America and America to know China. Between two societies that once seemed so different, so threatening, so unbridgeably alien to each other, a web of understanding and interdependence is being formed that will help cushion the inevitable jolts that occur from time to time in the relations among all friendly nations.

  The foundation of a lasting Sino–U.S. relationship has been laid. We must now build upon it.

  Our first priority must be to redouble our efforts to increase bilateral trade. The current levels are more than we dreamed possible when we first opened the door to China. But it is still far too little. Our trade with Taiwan’s fifteen million people is ten times as great as with the PRC’s one billion.

&nb
sp; Because a large percentage of its exports consist of textiles, China is all too vulnerable to protectionist sentiment in the United States. In spite of our trade deficit with our Asian trading partners, including China, President Reagan deserves great credit for resisting demands that he raise trade barriers. He must continue to do so, as must his successor. Protectionism is a viscerally satisfying quick fix, but it is always counterproductive in the long run. Japan, which is the primary target of the protectionists, has an economy which is so strong that it could probably absorb new U.S. trade restrictions. But they would have a devastating impact on China’s developing economy and conceivably on the strategic balance in Asia and the world. If the open door to the West closes, China would again be forced to knock on the gates of the Kremlin.

  The West must also increase China’s access to the technology it needs for industrial development. We should not sell highly sensitive technologies that could be used against us militarily to any potentially hostile nation. But neither should we be overly rigorous about technologies that have no military application but that would be indispensable to modernizing the Chinese economy. Many of these will also be available to China from other trading partners in the industrialized West. Better the Chinese get them from us so that we will be in a position to reap the benefits.

  The future of the Sino–U.S. relationship is as much in the hands of American businessmen as in those of its statesmen. As Khrushchev once said to a group of Western business leaders, “You stay in power, while the politicians change all the time.” But as befits their long-range role American businessmen must learn the Eastern art of taking the long view. The Chinese think in terms of decades and centuries, while hard-driving Westerners often think no further ahead than the bottom line at the end of the current fiscal year. Many businessmen returning from China complain about the maddeningly slow pace of the Chinese foreign-trade bureaucracy. Americans are used to pitching a deal in the morning, smoothing the rough edges over a three-martini lunch, and tying up the loose ends that afternoon with a few phone calls and telexes. But the hard-and-fast sell will not work in China. The Chinese remember when the Western powers exploited their country unmercifully, and the memory has made them tough bargainers.

  Nonetheless Americans who stick it out now, when the Chinese economy is just beginning to expand, will be glad they did. Over 8,300 joint ventures between Chinese and Western firms have been approved, and over 150 foreign companies have been permitted to set up wholly owned subsidiaries—in stark contrast to many other developing countries such as Mexico, which is so paranoid about outside investment that it puts heavy restrictions on foreign ownership. Those investors who have their foot in the door in 1988 and keep it there will reap unimaginable rewards as China grows and prospers. For those doing business in China, patience will lead to great rewards.

  The worst mistake we could make in our China policy is to indulge in the uniquely American practice of piously instructing other countries about how to conduct their political business. The Chinese are a fiercely independent people who have always chafed at attempts by others to influence or dominate their affairs. Statements of concern from Americans, in government or in the media, about apparent antireform or antidemocratic trends in China will serve no purpose other than to offend and alienate the Chinese leadership and possibly produce an effect that is exactly opposite to what the naive critics intend. Americans on both the left and the right must resist their bighearted urge to lecture the Chinese on human rights. And it is ludicrous for us to attempt, as some in the Reagan administration have urged, to impose our views about abortion on China, an overcrowded country where the choice is between population control and starvation.

  Most important, we must avoid any misstep on the difficult issue of Taiwan. The position we took in 1972 in the Shanghai Communiqué, which has been reinforced in subsequent Sino–U.S. understandings, is the one that should govern our policy in the future. The Chinese on both Taiwan and the mainland maintain that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. Our only interest is that in deciding the issue among themselves, the Chinese should decide it peacefully. We cannot and should not broker a deal. The most sensitive issue is arms. We must strictly adhere to our commitment to provide only defensive arms to Taiwan, lessening the pace of our military aid only as tensions between Taiwan and Beijing lessen.

  But we must make it clear that in building our friendship with the Chinese on the mainland we will not sacrifice our Chinese friends on Taiwan. Julian Amery put the issue eloquently: “It is often necessary and legitimate to abandon causes long supported and to dissolve pledged bonds of alliance. But it is always wrong to abandon men who have been friends to their fate. We may have to jettison their interests but we should leave no stone unturned to save at least their lives.” Two of the blackest pages in the history of American diplomacy were our complicity in the murder of Diem and our insensitivity to the fate of the Shah after we greased the skids for his downfall and thus helped bring Khomeini to power. We must not commit a similar atrocity against the Taiwanese.

  Many Americans who are preoccupied with the Taiwan issue fail to realize that Deng is under as much pressure, if not more, to act on Taiwan from conservatives in his own government as American Presidents have been from the pro-Taiwan lobby in the United States. It is in neither our interests nor those of our friends on Taiwan to provoke a confrontation with Beijing. Deng hopes that the agreement he made with the British on Hong Kong, by which the crown colony will revert to Chinese control in 1997 under the principle of “one country, two systems,” will serve as a starting point for a comparable arrangement on Taiwan. In any case, the more sensitive we can be to Chinese concerns on this issue, the better, both for Deng and for Taiwan. The issue is enormously complex and has no simple solution. But the Chinese are a very clever people. I am confident they will eventually resolve it peacefully.

  The Chinese will watch what the United States does elsewhere in the world just as carefully as they watch what we do in China. Recent developments have given them good reason to be concerned about our consistency and dependability. Our loss in Vietnam, followed by the spread of Soviet power throughout Indochina, was a devastating strategic blow to China, which suffered twenty thousand casualties in a 1979 war with Soviet-backed Vietnam that would not have occurred if South Vietnam had not been defeated by the communist North.

  The Chinese were deeply troubled by our geopolitical hibernation during the late 1970s. When I saw Mao in 1976 six months before his death, he asked me rather ruefully, “Is peace America’s only goal?” I answered that we wanted a peace that was more than the absence of war—a “peace with justice.” At that time, regrettably, my words were empty. America was in the throes of the Vietnam syndrome and in no mood to fulfill its international responsibilities. Twelve years later our resolve has stiffened considerably as the rancor and bitterness of our Vietnamese experience have faded, but it has not yet been put to a real test, and the Chinese know it. Still, the national-security imperatives that brought us together remain a critical element in our relationship. The Chinese will continue to count on us to bring pressure to bear on the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan; to maintain a military presence in the Pacific to balance Soviet strength; to pursue hardheaded arms-control agreements with the Soviets that will not leave them with a strategic advantage they could use to blackmail us and our friends; and to continue to resist the spread of Soviet influence in the developing world. We should do all these things in our own interests as well as in theirs.

  In these and other areas, our interests and those of the Chinese are similar. Aggressively pursuing our foreign-policy interests will automatically bolster our relationship with China; failing to act when we should will hurt the relationship. Until China’s defense establishment becomes stronger than it is today, the essence of its military deterrent is ours. But we must never forget that we act for our sake, not China’s. Pandering to the Chinese will only earn their contempt. We can expec
t that in spite of our cordial relations Beijing will continue to indulge in its traditional anti-capitalist, occasionally anti-American public rhetoric. We should not object to this any more than the Chinese should object to our speaking out against communism.

  But our convergent interests will diverge suddenly and sharply in the event China moves beyond rhetoric and embarks on a newly expansionist, aggressive phase in its foreign policy. For example, in part to make money and in part to offset Soviet overtures to Khomeini, the Chinese in 1986 sold $1 billion in weapons to Iran. Such a policy has its understandable motivations, but it also has its inescapable consequences. The Reagan administration reacted properly when it took measures to deprive China of high-technology equipment it wanted and needed.

  As they have become more sophisticated in economic policy, so too have the Chinese become more shrewd in foreign policy. They pursue an independent, carefully calibrated range of initiatives: taking tentative steps toward relations with South Korea without endangering their long-standing ties with the communist north; gradually improving relations with their former enemy Japan without permitting an uncontrolled flood of Japanese imports and influence; keeping a line open to Iraq at the same time they sell weapons to Iran; and, most significant, pursuing talks and exchanges aimed at warming the chill between Beijing and Moscow.

  Signs of a Sino–Soviet thaw have caused considerable confusion and even some consternation in the United States. Some super-hawks had hoped that the two communist giants would go to war—in spite of the fact that even a conventional clash between China and the Soviet Union would probably escalate into a nuclear World War III. Others, pointing to such factors as a nearly sevenfold increase in bilateral trade between 1982 and 1986, fear that a Sino–Soviet rapprochement will create a newly united communist monolith that will threaten us.