How NATO Accidentally Bombed The Chinese Embassy in Belgrade - with Susan Shirk
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Hi listeners, welcome to a new episode of Peking Hotel. I'm your host Leo. We're in the festive season, so Merry Early Christmas to all of you and sending my best wishes to all your friends and families. And thanks for supporting our show, I really appreciate it. We hope you would tell your friends and your colleagues about us so they will have the same fun that you have. And this week I bring you another conversation with Professor Susan Sherk.

Susan is a political science professor at UC San Diego. She's one of the world's foremost thinkers on Chinese politics. She shook hands with Zhou Enlai in the 1970s as a young PhD student and later became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the second Clinton administration in the late 90s.

Now, one of the great mysteries of US-China relations in the past decade is the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War.

In May 1999, a NATO B-2 stealth bomber dropped bombs, killed three state journalists and destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The incident provoked public outcry in China and to this day, many still think that the bombing was an intentional act of aggression by the US against China. Susan was the senior State Department official overseeing the incident.

And so in this episode, she recounts her experience during the diplomatic crisis in Belgrade, as well as the impact of Falun Gong on Taiwan and Jiang Zemin's state visit to the U.S. on U.S.-China relations and the ebbs and flows of U.S.-China relations in the engagement years. And so with that, here's my conversation with Professor Susan Shirk.

Jiang Zemin visited the U.S. in 1997. Could you talk us through that visit? Which, I mean, was the first visit of the Chinese leader to come to the U.S.? In a long time. In a long time, yeah. Yeah, it was great. I mean, Jiang Zemin was really happy. I mean, all of his staff were really worried about demonstrators and stuff. And you could hear them, you know, especially I remember in Honolulu. And they were mostly Chinese.

about Tibet, things like that. But Jiang Zemin was the first Chinese leader in modern time, really, number one leader, to be the statesman, the global representative of China, and to go around the world paying these kinds of state visits. Think about it. This was the period he was the first leader who was general secretary of the party, president,

and head of the military commission because Deng thought it was important to strengthen the role of the leader now, institutionally. So it was kind of this fused leadership. And before then, the president, the president has no powers in China. So the president, really, the main role is the head of state to go around the world representing China.

And Jiang Zemin loved that role. He loved it. He's natural at it. Yeah, and we lavished respect on him. We didn't have much to give, you know, because we were very politically constrained by our own domestic politics. What we could lavish was respect. And he just wanted that. He loved that. I'm not saying he just wanted that, but he enjoyed it. Why not? And, you know, the whole thing was...

was great from that standpoint. And a lot of different dinners and speeches and everything. You know, I never was very impressed by Jiang Zemin. You know, I sat in on a lot of meetings with Jiang Zemin, and he always seemed a little clownish to me. You know, he liked to show off his Western learning skills.

and he would like to quote, you know, poetry or Shakespeare or something. He seemed to me to lack gravitas, to lack seriousness about the issues. But President Clinton always said to his staff, like me, "It's really easy to underestimate this guy, so don't underestimate him. He's a very good domestic politician. He knows what he's doing.

And Clinton actually had more respect for him than we did, the rest of us. But he handled himself pretty well on those trips and on that trip. And it was, you know, a real kind of ice-breaking trip. Is it fair to say he managed to charm the U.S. political establishment through that trip? He tried to charm. I don't know that they were so charmed by him, but...

I mean, I found him likable right he was likable. He tried to show warmth. He's not the typical stern stiff-faced communist cadre one one very awkward thing happened Which was chen chi chun who was accompanying him. This really reveals a lot about the role of congress so congress

Jesse Helms, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican, Southern Republican. He and his staff were making a big push to appoint a special ambassador to Tibet. Wow. Which, of course, would be very offensive to China. And our official position is that Tibet is part of China, People's Republic of China.

So we said, the State Department said, you know, we cannot have an ambassador to Tibet. But what we had to give way on was to have a special commissioner for Tibet, you know, a special representative to address the issues related to Tibet and try to promote dialogue between Beijing and Tibet.

on the seventh floor of the State Department. So it was negotiated with Jesse Helms' staff. Had to be someone on the seventh floor of the State Department, the senior-most level. And they insisted on announcing it publicly just when John Zeman is visiting the United States. How insulting, you know, outrageous. But we had no choice. We had to go along with it. We couldn't say no. Wait, this was from the State Department?

No, it's from Congress. It is the seventh floor of the State Department? Seventh floor of the State Department, yeah. The State Department decided, okay, we'll appoint the head of policy planning, who's on the seventh floor, will also be the special Tibet representative, commissioner, whatever they called him. And then my job was to tell Chen Chi-chun we were doing this. You were the messenger. I was, again...

So embarrassed. I had to explain to him that the timing was unfortunate. It was imposed upon us by Congress. We had no choice. This is how American system works. I mean, I didn't go in any great length. You didn't need to either, I don't think. You know, I just said, we're doing it. It's going to be announced today. We were in New York after Washington. What was his response?

Yeah, this is terrible. He didn't say anything rude to me or anything like that. He just, and he didn't lose his temper. He's a very cool guy. So this is most unfortunate, but thanks for letting me know. And your impression of Jerome Dion history? Oh my gosh, he was fantastic. So impressive. I mean, really very smart, very sensible, very dignified person.

and he didn't lose his temper with anybody either. And he was very respected by his delegation. He's someone with gravitas. Yes. And no shortage of charisma as well. And how did Bill Clinton interact with Chinese diplomats and other visitors? I mean, I can tell you that President Clinton

Both Madeleine Albright and President Clinton were really great diplomatic communicators. The thing that always impressed me about President Clinton, you know, we'd bring people to the Oval Office or whatever, would make eye contact, speaking to the visitor, speaking English, and usually then there'd be consecutive translation. But when the translator was speaking, he didn't take his eyes away from

from the visitor. That's not easy to do. Usually when the translator is doing it, you sit back and think what you're going to say next. But he was kind of working his interpersonal magic on the visitor. And he was just a superb communicator that way. Madeline Albright has a wonderful way of using humor. And she also...

I didn't notice that she was as good with the eye contact when the translator was working. But she had a great way of making a personal connection with the people she talked with. And how did the communist officials respond? I mean, you mentioned in the 70s they used to be quite stiff. Even coming on trips to America, they were quite stiff. You know, I think things got looser and looser, for sure.

Chen Shih-chung, people like that. I mean, Chen Shih-chung was an incredibly impressive diplomat. I feel fortunate to have observed him when Jiang Zemin came to the United States. But then also, he would come to the UN General Assembly and meet with Madeleine Albright. And I remember one meeting very vividly is that

We had been after the Chinese side to stop selling anti-ship missiles to Iran. And we weren't getting very far with that. But we brought it up in all these meetings because they put the American Navy in the Gulf at risk. And then at the U.N. General Assembly, Madeleine Albright said,

had a meeting with Chen Xi. Chen Xi-chuan had spent part of that morning at the Israeli embassy. Interesting. And without, even before we raised that issue, he just sort of out of the blue says, "Oh, by the way, we're no longer going to sell the anti-ship missiles to Iran." And it was like the one time I can imagine that one of your objectives has suddenly been achieved.

And, you know, out of the blue it felt. But what he said was, in my discussions at the Israeli embassy, I really have a better understanding of the risks of these missiles. I don't think he decided on the spot. I think the decision was made before it came. But still, I was struck by the fact that he'd heard the argument from the Israelis about

that seemed to influence the decision. China was quite important in the Cold War era because it was a check against Soviet power. And now that Soviet was gone, what was the place for China in the American global policy, foreign policy? China wasn't fighting a war or anything like in, well, Yugoslavia or in the Middle East. We wanted to...

get China to cooperate with the United States on a lot of different issues like related to nonproliferation, related to the environment, global public goods, I would say. And we started having these security dialogues, you know, very open-ended, like our meetings, high-level meetings with China. We started building in time

for unscripted discussion of foreign policy issues in various parts of the world, Africa, South Asia, Middle East, you know, and so we were giving China a lot of respect. Really, we were kind of boosting China up as global power, because if you look at the speeches from that time,

You know, our goal was to help China emerge into the world as a responsible power. And it appeared to be working quite well. We, you know, managed to cooperate on a lot of foreign policy issues. As I say, we didn't really accomplish much in terms of human rights, for sure. But we were creating a kind of global order that China was part of it.

You know, when we had the Asian financial crisis, that's when we created the G20. Because originally we tried to get China to come to the G7, G8. All the time we tried to get them in because we turned the G7 into the G8. We were so generous and open-minded, we invited the Russians in, right? Became the G8.

And we said, OK, let's make it the G9. Let's invite China. China didn't accept the invitation. I remember when India tested nuclear weapon. Madeleine Albright had to figure out, you know, how are we going to respond? What are we going to do? She felt we need to have China be part of that response. She was in Europe. She...

I think she was at a G7, G8 meeting and she said, she called the Tang Jiaxuan, the Chinese foreign minister and said, you know, why don't you to the G8, join the G8 meeting at least, even if you don't want to formally join right now and we can discuss what to do in Geneva. He said, well, let me talk to my colleagues. I'll get back to you. He came back and said, no, sorry.

The G20 with the global, the Asian financial crisis, Larry Summers and others, they felt we needed to broaden the set of countries that would work on global issues together. It no longer made sense to just have the U.S., Europe, Japan, Canada. We wanted to give a seat at the table to China as well and thought that we would be

be able to do better at solving problems with China there. So long as China took a... I mean, they didn't have to agree with everything, but they had a sense of responsibility. We're a responsible power. Why do you think they turned it down? Well, G7, G8, they just always felt like, oh, that's the West. That's not us. Even though Japan was there.

I have no idea. They came to G20, though. They liked the G20. But basically, China always liked the Security Council more than any other institution. Well, they have the veto there. It's their favorite. An Asian financial crisis as well in 1998. Did that affect the process at all? Oh, yeah. Well, that was very important because it actually became...

an issue that China and the United States were able to cooperate on because China took, I think, quite a responsible position on the Asian financial crisis. We did not want them to devalue their currency as other countries had. We worked with the IMF

China did not devalue their currency. And we recognized that wasn't easy for them. So we gave them a lot of credit, you know, and Zhu Rongji was the guy kind of in charge of managing this whole thing. So it was in the lead up to Clinton visit to China where we were

we expressed our appreciation to China's responsible position. They didn't even critique the IMF role, and they kind of cooperated with the IMF. They supplemented it by creating a kind of swap system, currency swap system, with Korea and Japan. It was the start of a trilateral relationship

cooperation among them. So in some ways, it stimulated some more positive developments in U.S.-China relations. One thing I really wanted to capture is your experience in the Belgrade bombing of the Chinese embassy. Could you talk about that whole thing? Sure. So I was on my way back from work and I got this call from

from the State Department and learned that there had been this bombing by NATO of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And so I turned around, went back to work, and with a kind of Jeff Bader lesson in mind as I drove through Rock Creek Park thinking about what we needed to do,

What was the Jeff Bader lesson? Well, the Jeff Bader lesson is you have to figure out in the shower before you get to work. So in other words, you have to think out what you think you need to do before you actually get into the maelstrom of work.

work in the building. My thinking was that regardless of what we learned about how this happened, we would need to apologize profusely to the Chinese because otherwise they would never let us forget our failure to apologize. And we'd hear about it over and over again.

for decades, just as they've, what they've said to the Japanese that you never apologize for all these historical atrocities during World War II. And, you know, the whole issue of apology is diplomatically and foreign policy very fraught. So my approach that I was thinking is we just have to go all out to apologize.

And so that's what we really tried to do. President Clinton tried to speak to President Johnson. They wouldn't answer the phone. They wouldn't talk to him. You know, Madeleine Albright, we went with her to the Chinese embassy in Washington to apologize. They were pretty angry.

rude there. I mean, we managed to do it, but it was a very tense kind of situation. We went to the Chinese embassy to sign, the president went to sign the condolence book later on. We had the ambassador in Beijing fly a flag at half-mast.

offered to go out to the airport to meet the plane with the three journalists who were killed in the attack. And, you know, so we did everything we could to try to

preserve a decent relationship even after this accidental bombing. The other thing we did is to, and finally, President Clinton, he made some remarks, public remarks from the White House as well. So we went all out to show how sorry we were and to apologize.

The other thing we did was to move forward to try to find out how this happened and to do an investigation, a report on how we might have made such a terrible mistake. And

So I was kind of in charge of pulling together the explanation during the investigation. So that meant working with the Pentagon, the military, as well as the CIA, because the targeting

was being done by the CIA. And I can go through the whole explanation of how it happened, but one of the interesting features of my effort to try to get the facts is that the CIA was incredibly helpful and forthcoming. And the military and the Pentagon

was not. And it was like pulling teeth to try. They were very defensive about everything. And then after we had the explanation, we asked to go to Beijing to present it to the Chinese government and to negotiate compensation.

for the victims and their families and to the Chinese government for the destruction of the building. So I went with Tom Pickering, who was the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, a very seasoned, brilliant diplomat, very experienced. And we went to China to have those discussions

Originally, Tom Pickering said, I'm not going unless I have a uniformed military officer to go with us because the State Department did not make this stupid mistake. The military did. And much to our dismay,

they refused to send a uniformed military officer, which infuriated us. The best we could get was, I think, the deputy head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. And he wasn't even in uniform. But we kind of, we were boxed in. We had no choice. We had to go. We had someone from the CIA and then, of course, someone from the legal department of the State Department.

to help with the negotiations. And so we, I think there were like five of us in this. And the other thing Tom Pickering insisted on is we weren't going to go commercial. We had to go in an official plane. You know, again, this was all designed to try to head off a crisis in relations with China over the

accidental bombing. So we went in this tiny little plane, squeezed in across the Pacific. It was really tough with our legs all intertwined with one another in this tiny little jet. And then we presented the explanation. We apologized. We negotiated compensation. Then how was the explanation received in China?

The Chinese government and the official media announced this, and they talked about the Hanren, the flagrant bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, with no recognition that it was an accident, the implication being that it was on purpose. And, of course, there was no reason for President Clinton to approve this.

the bombing of the Chinese embassy. It's the last thing in the world he wanted to do. He was trying to stabilize relations with China. And so there is a lot of suspicion in China that, okay, maybe President Clinton himself didn't want to bomb the Chinese embassy, but there must be anti-China

officials in these different, in the military or different agencies, kind of a Tom Clancy type plot to subvert relations with China. And we presented the explanation, we did the negotiations, but much to my frustration, largely due to the

public statements of the Chinese government, people in China believed it was done intentionally. And the students, university students in Beijing got angry about this and they wanted to demonstrate, you know, their resentment and anger against the United States. The Chinese government facilitated the protests.

They provided buses to Chinese students at Beida, Tsinghua, other universities to go to the American embassy. They did the same thing in Chengdu and other cities where we have consulates. And so, in effect, they facilitated, they mobilized these student protests.

And the reason they did that was that they were very nervous. We've talked about how insecure Chinese leadership always is, and particularly under Jiang Zemin. And so they wanted to, this was in May of 1999. It was just a few weeks before the 10th anniversary of

of the Tiananmen demonstrations. And they were very worried that at that 10th university, the students would try to repeat the demonstrations. They would go to Tiananmen or they would go to Zhongnanhai and they would attack, protest against the Chinese leadership for being too weak

in the face of American pressure, that the Americans felt they could disrespect and harm China to the extent of bombing a Chinese embassy in another country. So in order to protect themselves, they diverted the student protests over to our embassy. And if you have ever seen pictures of the embassy,

of what it looked like during those protests. The students threw Molotov cocktails, they threw paint and bricks at the embassy. Our ambassador and a few other diplomats were inside the embassy, and there are these photographs. It's Jim Sasser. There are pictures of him in the windows of the embassy, almost like he was a captive inside the embassy.

The police allowed the protests to occur. Of course, they'd been bussed in by Chinese official buses, and they didn't try to stop them. It was really infuriating, and it was really very worrisome to the safety and security of our diplomats. So we

tried very hard through the embassy and to get the Chinese government to control the protests, to stop the protests. But they went, they didn't go on as long as the Tiananmen protests, but they went on for, you know, a couple of days until they finally petered out. Even today,

Many people in China, probably most people in China, believe that the bombing was purposeful. And in recent weeks, with the Chinese government offering tacit support to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and blaming the Russian attack on Ukraine on NATO enlargement,

And the fact that NATO itself has become more concerned about Chinese actions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, symbolically, they're very strongly opposed to NATO. So at this time, Xi Jinping has once again stirred up anger over the bombing of the Chinese embassy at Belgrade.

I just felt very frustrated by this because in the early days, in the year or two after it happened, the explanation based on the investigation that we presented to the Chinese government was on the website of the American embassy in Beijing, both in English and in Chinese. But then after a few years, they just brought it down.

So if you now search on Google or some other search engine for the bombing of the Chinese embassy in May of 1999 in Belgrade, you will get, you won't find that explanation and you will find a number of European newspapers that took a more conspiratorial view about, oh, there must have been some

you know, some figures in the U.S. government who were trying to undercut improvement of U.S.-China relations by this embassy. The other thing they say, of course, is that the embassy had a—this was not collateral damage. I mean, we had targeted this building. And they say, oh, well, this building was being used to gather intelligence

The Chinese were helping the Serbian government by gathering intelligence. Well, all I can tell you is I talked to our intelligence people. They said, yes, the Chinese embassy was used to gather intelligence. They monitor signal intelligence. But they believe that the Chinese government was not actively involved

assisting the Serbian government.

but they were using the government for their, the intelligence for their own purposes. But in China, people just assume that the Chinese, nobody, they assume the Chinese government wasn't telling them, but that the Chinese government was assisting the Serbians to resist NATO. Yeah, I mean, if you want, I can tell you the whole explanation, which maybe is worth doing because,

I am 100% personally sure this was not purposeful. It was accidental. But, you know, the problem was the Chinese government and Chinese people have huge respect for American competence. And they believed that it was impossible for us to make a mistake like this. They have respect for our internal management skills.

of our own policy and policy implementation and our military. So I thought, oh, it can't possibly be an accident. So when I put together the explanation with my colleagues, I wanted to add an appendix of the list of some of the other terrible mistakes we've made because I thought it would make the explanation more credible. They wouldn't let me do that.

They thought that was too humiliating. We couldn't do that. But I think that was a big mistake. Because, of course, American military and government, we've made mistakes in the past. And so what was the conclusion? I mean, how did the bombing of the Chinese embassy happen? So anyway, the story is that the CIA had a contractor, not a regular employee. And when the call went out,

NATO was bombing targets in the Kosovo War, especially in Belgrade, and they were running out of targets, military targets, ones that would help the Serbians maintain their strength.

So NATO was looking for additional targets. The call went out. We're looking for more targets. And over in the CIA, there was a contractor who worked on nonproliferation. He was aware that there was a depot of military, of missile,

parts and stuff that was being used by the Serbians to sell missile, missile parts and devices to other countries. I'm not, I can't even remember now exactly which countries, maybe Iran. I'm not sure. Not China. And so this contractor, he submitted this depot, arms depot,

as a potential target to be struck by NATO. Now, he identified the location of it in a very crude manner, which is that he looked at streets parallel. He had the address. And then he looked at other parallel streets. And he tried to figure out which building was this arms depot.

But and then so it was just parallel streets, but looking at the same numbers, street numbers. But of course, it's not the case that street numbers necessarily track one another from parallel avenue or street to the next parallel avenue or street.

So he, anyway, he identified a building that he thought was the arms depot. Then he runs it through. We have, it's not actually a map. They said it was a out of date map. It's not really a map. It's a database with a lot of information about location data and our practice is

The military practice is to run things through three separate databases to make sure that we don't make targeting errors and we don't strike a hospital or a school or something by mistake. But I'm quite sure, and talking to the CIA and the military people, I'm sure that these databases...

are not actually independently created. But the mistakes in one database get repeated in the others. So they run this locational information about the so-called, assume this arms depot through three databases. And then they send the information to NATO and they strike a building, which the databases did not have

the accurate information about where the Chinese embassy was. The Chinese embassy had moved and they didn't obtain up-to-date information about where the Chinese embassy was. So that basically was a mistake. And then when this B-52 bomber comes with his bombs to strike this building,

They struck the Chinese embassy. So they did strike a building, the Chinese embassy, that had a lot of intelligence gathering stuff. So there were quite a few injuries. The building was destroyed. And three journalists who, of course, in China, these state journalists are collecting news information,

They're not 100% private journalists at all. So they're kind of doing collection of intelligence for the government as well as for the news media. So that's the story. We told the story just like that in the explanation. And by the way, just in the last few weeks, I have managed to get the U.S. Embassy to put this on the website.

in Chinese and English. And hopefully it will stay there forever. I mean, because in recent weeks, Xi Jinping brought it up again in Serbia where he visited. Right, he visited Serbia and talked about, what did he say? Something like the, not the oath of blood, the blood ties between the Serbian people and the Chinese because they're both victims of American aggression.

And that legacy, that political messaging is probably here to stay. The Communist Party is probably going to reenact it for the years to come. And, you know, after it happened...

It was very difficult. The Chinese cut off all diplomatic contacts with the United States for about six months. And this is the period when we're trying to get back to finally conclude the WTO agreement. The only channel that they continued, which I found kind of interesting, was discussions about North Korean nuclear issues.

Otherwise, they cut off all diplomatic communication. And of course, at the same time, the military threat of China became an issue for America in terms of arms sale, in terms of... Well, actually, my colleague, Taiming Cheng, who studies Chinese military and dual-use technologies and things like that,

His research indicates that the Belgrade embassy bombing was a real turning point in China's military modernization program. I thought it was an earlier kind of the Taiwan Strait crisis. But his interviews with people in the military indicate the Belgrade embassy bombing really increased the sense of vulnerability.

China's sense of vulnerability. And the military hyped that in order to get more resources, bigger budgets to modernize their military. And what was your approach to Taiwan as Deputy Assistant Secretary? You know, we really took the risks of military conflict in Taiwan very, very seriously. And in

I'm trying to remember, you know, Chen Shui-bian was really a problem, not Lee Tung-hui. Lee Tung-hui stepped down. When did Lee Tung-hui step down? 2001, something like that. Really? Or later. I think it's quite early. Lee Tung-hui had how many terms? I think he had one term, right? Yeah, they all have only one term. Anyway, I... But Taiwan, our inability...

to control what Taiwan politicians say and do is really a major challenge because they can be very provocative and like this to Beijing and there's very little we can do about it. So continually try to reassure Beijing that this isn't us, it's them, you know? And Bill Clinton, when he visited China,

In 1998, he did articulate the three no's, a library in Shanghai. So that was all planned and managed and part of the negotiation. And it wasn't anything new. Madeleine Albright had already said it when she visited China. And even going back to Kissinger, he said it. Our view about saying things related to Taiwan...

It's fine to give that away if we've said it before. We're not going to say new things. But if we've said it before and they want us to say it and we want them to do things like commit to detargeting our nuclear missiles toward one another, other deliverables in meetings, we'll do it. But, you know, the tensions over Taiwan...

very, very, almost constant. But whenever Taiwan politicians say or do things about Taiwan being a country and whatever they say. But you know, something interesting, during the time I was in government, the whole idea of the 1992 consensus, which is there's

"One China, but the definition varies between Beijing and Taipei," which was something that came out of the Singapore meeting in '92. That was a kind of compromise position that Taipei endorsed. And the "One China" principle was Beijing's position.

they didn't accept the '92 consensus. Look at today, the situation has flipped. Now the '92 consensus is the Beijing position. I have always felt that all of these, what I call magic words, about declaratory policy on Taiwan are purely symbolic. Both sides would be better off ignoring this kind of declaratory policy.

And I do think that Xi Jinping has gotten himself boxed in by the magic words now. So it's most unfortunate it would be so much better to restore high-level dialogue with no preconditions, no magic words, preconditions. Because think about it. Taiwan has an elected president. This president has to maintain certain authority and respect. They have domestic politics too. They have domestic politics.

They cannot utter the words exactly upon the command of Beijing. If they do, you know, they look like they have no authority. But that's what Xi Jinping wants. Yeah, but it's so stupid. It doesn't get you anything. And so that's why I was in favor, remain in favor of high-level dialogue with no preconditions. Yeah.

What was the role, what was the position of Taiwan in the greater context of US-China relations? Why did the US even care about Taiwan given ever-closening ties with China? We care about Taiwan more and more as Taiwan became a vibrant democracy, but it became less amenable to our influence and control. That was really a challenge.

And then, of course, there's the whole question. I mean, so we have this friendly relationship with Taiwan that we just can't walk away from. We can't allow Beijing to just absorb Taiwan. And we have a legal commitment to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act. I feel that our policy, I mean, if you think about it, U.S.-China relations...

have managed the cross-strait issues. The US and China have managed this knotty set of problems pretty well over the years. And in a way, you could view it as one of the greatest achievements of US-China diplomacy, maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait. Hopefully, we'll continue to do that, just with no major changes in the status quo.

Did the Falun Gong demonstrations play any role in the U.S.-China relationship? That was important in terms of contributing to the insecurity of Jiang Zemin because the Falun Gong organization organized this massive sit-in around Zhongnanhai in complete secrecy, and there was no warning from the security authorities

apparatus to Jiang Zemin. So it really freaked him out. I mean, what they were protesting was, I believe in Tianjin, they were required to register as a sect or something like that, and they didn't want to do that. And so they organized. Now, of course, Falun Gong is a variety of Qigong.

which is Buddhist-related spiritual and physical fitness movement based on breathing exercises and stuff. So it was, at the time, had gotten quite popular in China with the elite, including party members.

and intellectuals and business people and, you know, become quite popular. Now, the kind of guru who is the head of Falun Gong lived in the United States. And still is the head. But there's no, I mean, the U.S. government had no contact with him. There was no effort to use Falun Gong as a tool

I don't know, cat's paw or something to disrupt China at all. This was not an externally driven thing. But Jiang Zemin was very, very shaken by the demonstration. According to some of the reports that appear to have come from Zhu Rongji,

Zhu Wengji at the time said, well, just talk with them, you know, negotiate an end to this demonstration. But Jiang Zemin instead launched a massive government effort to destroy Fallen Bug, destroy the movement, crack down on it, ban it, set up a special office in the center. And basically, that continues.

this anti-Fallenberg movement. But it's obviously not a serious threat in China. But it contributed to this paranoid mindset of Jiang Zemin in particular. Did it impact your work as a Deputy Assistant Secretary? It did. Well, for one thing, I had to try to learn more about it. I remember we had a

you know, half a day or a day long kind of workshop at INR with people to try to explain more of it to us. And then, you know, it contributed to this paranoid mindset. And it came after we failed to sign the WTO deal when Zhu Rongji came. Next, we have this demonstration of

sit-in around Jum'nanhai, Falun Gong. And then we have the Belgrade embassy bombing. So all of these things are basically human agency, accidental, unpredictable events, which had a major impact on U.S.-China relations. And I think about them often because it contributes to my belief that

that, you know, this kind of stuff happens and could happen again in the future. How did you know about China being in office? And how do you interact with the intelligence side of US government? Well, that the intelligence side is, you know, it's great, because they're like colleagues who are China watchers and stuff. And, you know, that was, but I have to tell you,

I had anticipated that one of the really good things about going into government was I'm going to have access to all of these classified sources. So I'm finally going to get inside the black box. I'm really going to understand China. Finally, so disappointing. There were

They know not much more than what we know outside government, I have to tell you. So that was kind of disappointing. But INR, people at INR are great, especially. You know, I had more to do with the people in the State Department's intelligence operation, INR, than I did with the people over at the CIA or DIA. Do you think they just don't have the sources in China?

I don't know, maybe it's gotten better, but I don't think it has gotten that much better because when I talk to colleagues in government about internal elite politics and things like that, they're always asking me. You have better sources than they do. No, I said, you know, what do you think? It's not just that it's classified material. They feel like they don't know that much. But a lot of what government is, is trying to

be effective, get things done by working with other people. And I really enjoyed that. You know, I think a lot of academic life is kind of the lonely monk with your books and your laptop. And it's kind of lonely. And I, it turns out that I really like working with other people. I learned that by directing the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and working

you know, other things that I'd done on campus before I went into government. But, you know, when you're, when you have the ability to play some kind of managerial or leadership role in working with other people, a lot of times academics disparage these abilities in other people.

and say, oh, well, so-and-so has a good personality, but, you know, they're not really that great a scholar. So, or they're only interested in policy. They look down their nose at that. I think there's a sense in which academic life attracts, often attracts people who are kind of loners. I'm not a loner. Some of my abilities hadn't really been utilized. And when I

Led IGCC and then went into government those abilities got utilized and that feels kind of good to use different parts different types of talents you have of course and since you are a scholar but also being on the inside of US policy How would you describe evaluate the impact of the China especially the China scholars? US China policy. I think it's it's pretty significant actually and

Because going way back to Cold War, Soviet Cold War times, a lot of these folks had pretty good access and relationships with people in government. Right. I think their perspective definitely has some influence. I mean, not, I wouldn't exaggerate it, but it does have some influence. And, you know, now, looking at today...

when there's such a souring of attitudes towards Xi Jinping's China, the China scholarly community is really strongly critical of China. It's much more like it was during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. We always used to joke that Russia scholars hate Russia. China scholars love China.

But that's no longer the case. I mean, they're much more, I mean, they may still love China as a society, but they're much more critical of China. And of course, big business is much more critical of China. You cannot find a group in America that is really defending China anymore because its actions are pretty indefensible. And that's a huge change, shift. Huge, huge.

And I think that takes us to the end of your time in the Clinton government. Did you want to stay in government after that? Yes and no. It's hard on the family, and I needed to get back. I mean, UC San Diego was incredibly generous in giving me three years off. Most universities will not give you more than two.

You know, if you want to keep your job, you've got to go back to the university. But the hard part is that it gets a little addictive knowing the inside of issues, the access to information. And that's the part that was hard to give up, you know. But I did give up my clearances and everything. So I just walked away back to the university. ♪

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