Fueling this transformation was a recalibration of China’s domestic political philosophy. Traveling further along the reformist road Deng had first charted, Jiang undertook to broaden the concept of Communism by opening it from an exclusive class-based elite to a wider spectrum of society. He spelled out his philosophy, which became known as the “Three Represents,” at the Sixteenth Party Congress in 2002—the last Congress he would attend as President on the eve of the first peaceful transfer of power in China’s modern history. It laid out why the Party that had won support through revolution needed now to represent as well the interests of its former ideological foes, including entrepreneurs. Jiang opened the Communist Party to business leaders, democratizing the internal governance of the Communist Party in what remained a one-party state.
Throughout this process, China and the United States were becoming increasingly intertwined economically. At the beginning of the 1990s the total volume of U.S. trade with mainland China was still only half the volume of American trade with Taiwan. By the end of the decade U.S.-China trade had quadrupled, and Chinese exports to the United States had increased sevenfold.
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American multinationals viewed China as an essential component of their business strategies, both as a locus of production and as an increasingly monetary market in its own right. China in turn was using its increasing cash reserves to invest in U.S. Treasury bonds (and in 2008 would become the largest foreign holder of American debt).
In all this China was surging toward a new world role, with interests in every corner of the globe and integrated to an unprecedented degree with broader political and economic trends. Two centuries after the first mutually miscomprehending negotiations over trade and diplomatic recognition between Macartney and the Chinese court, there was a recognition in both China and the West that they were arriving at a new stage in their interactions, whether or not they were prepared for the challenges it would pose. As China’s then Vice Premier Zhu Rongji observed in 1997: “Never before in history has China had such frequent exchanges and communications with the rest of the world.”
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In earlier eras—such as Macartney’s or even the Cold War era—a “Chinese world” and a “Western world” had interacted in limited instances and at a stately pace. Now modern technology and economic interdependence made it impossible, for better or for worse, to manage relations in such a measured manner. As a result, the two sides confronted a somewhat paradoxical situation in which they had vastly more opportunities for mutual understanding, but, at the same time, new opportunities to impinge on each other’s sensitivities. A globalized world had brought them together, but also risked more frequent and rapid exacerbation of tensions in times of crisis.
As his period in office moved toward its conclusion, Jiang expressed his recognition of this danger in a personal, almost sentimental, way not generally found in the aloof, conceptual, self-contained manner of the Chinese leadership. The occasion was a meeting in 2001 with some members of the America-China Society. Jiang was in the last year of his twelve-year tenure but already seized by the nostalgia of those who are leaving activity in which, by definition, every action made a difference for a world in which they will soon be largely spectators. He had presided over a turbulent period, which had begun with China substantially isolated internationally, at least among the advanced democratic states, the countries China most needed to implement its reform program.
Jiang had surmounted these challenges. Political cooperation with America had been reestablished. The reform program was accelerating and producing the extraordinary growth rate that would, within another decade, turn China into a financial and economic global power. A decade that began in turbulence and doubt had turned into a period of extraordinary achievement.
In all of China’s extravagant history, there was no precedent for how to participate in a global order, whether in concert with—or opposition to—another superpower. As it turned out, that superpower, the United States, also lacked the experience for such a design—if indeed it had the inclination for it. A new international order was bound to emerge, whether by design or by default. Its nature and the measures for bringing it about were the unsolved challenges for both countries. They would interact, either as partners or as adversaries. Their contemporary leaders professed partnership, but neither had yet managed to define it or build shelters against the possible storms ahead.
Now Jiang was encountering a new century and a different generation of American leaders. The United States had a new President, the son of George H. W. Bush, who had been in office when Jiang was elevated so unexpectedly by events no one could have foreseen. The relationship with the new President started with another unsought military clash. On April 1, 2001, an American reconnaissance plane flying along the Chinese coast just outside Chinese territorial waters was being tailed by a Chinese military aircraft, which then crashed into it near Hainan Island off China’s southern coast. Neither Jiang nor Bush permitted the incident to torpedo the relationship. Two days later, Jiang left on a long-planned trip to South America, signaling that he, as head of the Central Military Commission, did not expect crisis action. Bush expressed regret, not for the reconnaissance flight but for the death of the Chinese pilot.
Some foreboding of the danger of drifting events seems to have been in Jiang’s mind during the meeting with America-China Society members, as he meandered on in a seemingly discursive statement quoting classical Chinese poetry, interjecting English phrases, extolling the importance of U.S.-Chinese cooperation. Prolix as his utterances were, they reflected a hope and a dilemma: the hope that the two countries would find a way to work together to avoid the storms generated by the very dynamism of their societies—and the fear that they might miss their chance to do so.
The key theme of Jiang’s opening remarks was the importance of the Sino-American relationship: “I am not trying to exaggerate our self-importance, but good cooperation between the U.S. and China is important for the world. We will do our best to do that [
said in English
]. This is important for the whole world.” But if the whole world was the subject, were any leaders really qualified to deal with it? Jiang pointed out that his education had started with traditional Confucianism on a trajectory that included Western education, then schools in the former Soviet Union. Now he was leading the transition of a country that dealt with all these cultures.
China and the United States were confronting an immediate issue, the future of Taiwan. Jiang did not use the familiar rhetoric to which we had become accustomed. Rather, his remarks concerned the internal dynamics of the dialogue and how it might be driven out of control, whatever the intention of the leaders, who might be urged by their publics to actions they would prefer to avoid: “The biggest issue between the U.S. and China is the Taiwan issue. For example, we often say ‘peaceful resolution’ and ‘one country, two systems.’ Generally speaking, I limit myself to saying these two things. But sometimes I add that we cannot undertake not to use force.”
Jiang could not avoid, of course, the issue that had caused a deadlock in over 130 meetings between Chinese and American diplomats before the opening to China or the deliberate ambiguities since. But while China refused to abjure the use of force because it would imply a limitation of its sovereignty, it had in practice refrained from it for thirty years by the time of the conversation with Jiang. And Jiang had put forward the sacramental language in the gentlest of manners.
Jiang did not insist on an immediate change. Rather, he pointed out that the American position contained an anomaly. The United States did not support independence for Taiwan nor, on the other hand, did it promote reunification. The practical consequence was to turn Taiwan into “an unsinkable aircraft carrier” for America. In such a situation, whatever the intentions of the Chinese government, the convictions of its population might generate their own momentum toward confrontation:
[I]n the nearly twelve years I’ve been in the Central government, I’ve felt very strongly the sentiments of the 1.2 billion Chinese people. Of course we have the best aspirations toward you, but if a spark flares up it will be hard to control the emotions of 1.2 billion people.
I felt obliged to reply to this threat of force, however regretfully and indirectly formulated:
[I]f the discussion concerns use of force it will strengthen all the forces that want to use Taiwan to harm our relationship. In a military confrontation between the U.S. and China, even those of us who would be heartbroken would be obliged to support our own country.
Jiang replied not by repeating the by now traditional invocation of the imperviousness of China to the danger of war. He took the perspective of a world whose future depended on Sino-American cooperation. He spoke of compromise—a word almost never used by Chinese leaders about Taiwan, even when it was practiced. He avoided making either a proposal or a threat. And he was no longer in a position to shape the outcome. He called for a global perspective—precisely what was most needed and what each nation’s history made most difficult:
It is not clear whether China and the U.S. can find common language and resolve the Taiwan question. I have remarked that if Taiwan were not under U.S. protection, we would have been able to liberate it. Therefore, the question is how we can compromise and get a satisfactory solution. This is the most sensitive part of our relations. I am not suggesting anything here. We are old friends. I do not need to use diplomatic language. In the final analysis, I hope that with Bush in office our two countries can approach U.S.-China relations from a strategic and global perspective.
The Chinese leaders I had previously met had a long-range perspective, but it drew a great deal from lessons of the past. They also were in the process of undertaking great projects with significance for a distant future. But they rarely described the shape of the middle-term future, assuming that its character would emerge from the vast efforts in which they were involved. Jiang asked for something less dramatic but perhaps even deeper. At the end of his presidency, he addressed the need to redefine the philosophical framework of each side. Mao had urged ideological rigor even while making tactical maneuvers. Jiang seemed to be saying that each side should realize that if they were to cooperate genuinely, they needed to understand the modifications they were obliged to make in their traditional attitudes. He urged each side to reexamine its own internal doctrines and be open to reinterpreting them—including socialism:
The world should be a rich, colorful, diversified place. For example, in China in 1978 we made a decision for reform and opening up. . . . In 1992 in the Fourteenth National Congress I stated that China’s development model should be in the direction of a socialist market economy. For those who are accustomed to the West, you think the market is nothing strange, but in 1992 to say “market” here was a big risk.
For that reason, Jiang argued that both sides should adapt their ideologies to the necessities of their interdependence:
Simply put, the West is best advised to set aside its past attitude toward communist countries, and we should stop taking communism in naive or simplistic ways. Deng famously said in his 1992 trip to the South that socialism will take generations, scores of generations. I am an engineer. I calculated that there have been 78 generations from Confucius until now. Deng said socialism will take so long. Deng, I now think, created very good environmental conditions for me. On your point about value systems, East and West must improve mutual understanding. Perhaps I am being a bit naive.
The reference to seventy-eight generations was intended to reassure the United States that it should not be alarmed at the rise of a powerful China. It would need that many generations to fulfill itself. But political circumstances in China had certainly changed when a successor of Mao could say Communists should stop talking about their ideology in naive and simplistic ways. Or speak of the need for a dialogue between the Western world and China over how to adjust their philosophical frameworks to each other.
On the American side, the challenge was to find a way through a series of divergent assessments. Was China a partner or an adversary? Was the future cooperation or confrontation? Was the American mission the spread of democracy to China, or cooperation with China to bring about a peaceful world? Or was it possible to do both?
Both sides have been obliged ever since to overcome their internal ambivalences and to define the ultimate nature of their relationship.
CHAPTER 18
The New Millennium
T
HE END OF the Jiang Zemin presidency marked a turning point in Sino-American relations. Jiang was the last President with whom the principal subject of the Sino-American dialogue was the relationship itself. After that, both sides merged if not their convictions then their practice into a pattern of cooperative coexistence. China and the United States no longer had a common adversary, but neither had they yet developed a joint concept of world order. Jiang’s mellow reflections in the long conversation with him, described in the last chapter, illustrated the new reality: the United States and China perceived that they needed each other because both were too large to be dominated, too special to be transformed, and too necessary to each other to be able to afford isolation. Beyond that, were common purposes attainable? And to what end?
The millennium was the symbolic beginning of that new relationship. A new generation of leaders had come into office in China and the United States: on the Chinese side, a “fourth generation” headed by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao; on the American side, administrations led by Presidents George W. Bush and, beginning in 2009, Barack Obama. Both sides had an ambivalent attitude toward the turmoil of the decades that preceded them.