Susan Shirk Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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You had the opportunity to serve in the Clinton administration, working on China policy. Tell us about how that differs from studying China in the academy. I want to touch on the distinction between theory and practice. What is it like to take your understanding of China and bring it to Washington to try to shape policy? What are the constraints on doing that? What are the opportunities that open up?
I was brought in as a political appointee because of my knowledge of China, so I had a great situation, because the senior officials in the government relied upon me and a couple of other people in a similar situation. You find yourself giving little tutorials about how China works all the time, which people felt, I think, were quite useful, so it was very gratifying.
If you're doing foreign policy, you want to think about how this is going to play domestically in China -- will it strengthen the more reformed-minded people who are in favor of good relations with the United States? There are also people in China who've been dragged kicking and screaming into the world, who are nostalgic, if not for the Mao era, for more traditional-style communist politics, and who are very suspicious of the United States. So you've got to be careful. You don't really want to play domestic politics in any other country, because the United States has gotten into trouble in the past trying to do that. We usually mess it up. But on the other hand, you have to think about all the moving parts in the Chinese political system too.
You have to, for example, estimate if we're pressing China to do something because it's important to us -- release political prisoners, for example, or agree to a nuclear fissile material moratorium. What I was doing all the time was making assessments of what it would take for the Chinese leaders to do something. I could say, "Well, here's what we should be really pushing on, because it's in their own interest to do and they're likely to be able to do it." Some things that you know it would just be very, very hard to do in terms of their own domestic politics, [but] sometimes you still have to push for them, because we have domestic politics too. But I'm always interested in what's actually going to make things better. I'm very pragmatic. So understanding how the Chinese political system works is really quite helpful in that regard.
Talk a little about the domestic constraints in the United States on China policy. Obviously, one set of problems arises from human rights concerns of American activists and congressional figures and staff. Talk a little about the disappointment by some actors in the American system about how fast the Chinese system is transforming itself to a democracy and so on.
China and our policy toward China is all wrapped up with domestic politics in the United States. And, typically, what happens is that -- and this is true from the Nixon era -- a president comes in, rejecting the policies of the last administration for being too soft on China or pandering to China, and the first six or twelve months tries to do something completely different and pressures China much harder, and then comes around to the conclusion that, in fact, the only way to ever really succeed in influencing China's international behavior in a positive direction over time, preventing China from being a threat, and also moving domestic political change in the right direction, is through engagement -- keeping China open, trying to talk to China. Standing up on a soapbox and preaching at them, telling them all the terrible things they're doing -- all that does is stimulate a nationalist backlash among the Chinese public. I can't tell you how many people in China have told me that after Tiananmen they appreciated the U.S. support of the democracy movement, but after a while, our approach to human rights alienated them. They found themselves standing more with the Chinese government, even though they, themselves, are in favor of promoting democracy in China. So it's counterproductive.
Many members of Congress are very responsive to interest groups, and there are a lot of interest groups that are pushing on human rights issues in China. Obviously Tibet is one of them, then during the nineties, the religious right, especially in the Republican Party, took up China as an issue.
For religious freedom in China.
China has a lot more religious freedom than it used to, but there are still some underground Protestant and Catholic churches where the government comes and picks people up and detains them if they're not registered. So in the Democratic Party you have Nancy Pelosi and a lot of other Democrats, Tom Lantos, very concerned about human rights, and, of course, especially labor rights, because the labor unions give a lot of support to Democrats. On the right, you've got the religious right that was concerned about religious persecution in China, and also use of coercion in family planning in China -- right-to-life - type people. So you put that together and it just became very, very difficult to take a more pragmatic approach, because people are concerned with taking a strong stand on principle. And in the administration, you're usually concerned with trying to make things better with China.
Here's a great example. This is one of the things I was the most frustrated about. Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress have, basically, made it impossible for any administration to spend any government money, aid money, on any programs in China. Zero.
Zero?
Even democracy programs, even rule-of-law [programs] to strengthen legal development in China, or technical assistance to banks to clean up the financial system, so we can implement WTO [World Trade Organization]. I can't tell you how many opportunities there are. Every department in China would love to have some kind of technical assistance program, and it's in our interest to do it.
What must they do before this will be rescinded? What is the quid pro quo?
It's complicated. But they ... how do I simplify this? I think the Congress would have to make affirmative legislation to permit it, as well as lifting ... see, we have all these sanctions on China that we've had on them for years and years and years. When we had the exchange of presidential visits between Jiang Zemin and President Clinton in 1997 and '98, we were really making progress in developing a better relationship with China. It would have been the right time to lift the sanctions. But it was politically impossible for the administration to lift the sanctions, because the Congress and the public would have accused us of appeasing China. And so those sanctions still remain. Now, we're trying to get China to work with us in the war against terrorism. We've lifted sanctions against Pakistan. We haven't lifted those sanctions against China.
In an ideal world, what would the U.S. be able to do that would further China's development and integration in the world economy, without taking actions that they would perceive as interfering with their internal affairs? What would be the opportunities to help shape China in a positive way that they would like, if we were not fettered by these constraints that Congress has put on us?
I think the most important thing that we achieved in the Clinton administration, in terms of encouraging China to develop in the right direction, was China's accession to the WTO, which is going to happen at Do Ha this week. We've made a very high bar for China. China is joining on terms that are so much more stringent -- [will] open up China's market so much more than most of the developing countries that have come in. The comparison with India is dramatic. India is a member of the WTO and its economy is still largely closed to imports from other countries. China has to open up its market very wide, and China's leadership has chosen to do that, because they think it will reinforce the reform direction for their economy and make them more competitive. Opening up to international competition by joining WTO is probably the most important thing.
Then, as I mentioned, we'd like to do a lot more technical training and advising, as we do in other countries, with their finance ministry. Their banking system is really shaky; that's still a point, a major risk area. Other types of technical training -- the people in the National People's Congress, the staff, want to rely more on the legal system. They want to [engage in] quiet political reform. We could do a lot more to help them. And our lawyers are ready to help them. Some of that does go on with some private funding, the American Bar Association and [others]. But we could do it in a much more effective way, if we were able to spend some government money. I mean, look at how much money we spend in Russia on the ground, or Eastern Europe. And we're not allowed to do any of that in China.
What are the contours that American policy should follow as we deal with the Taiwan issue? That is clearly a problem that is very susceptible to misperceptions on both sides, on the one hand, but really quite susceptible to American policy being pushed in the wrong direction. Talk a little about that.
Taiwan is the toughest issue in U.S. - China relations -- the most difficult one, and the most dangerous one. There is a very real risk of China and Taiwan being engaged in a military conflict that would embroil the United States. Because of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, we are pledged to provide Taiwan with military equipment, and we have done that over the years. And we have a political/moral commitment. It's not an alliance. If the PRC were to attack Taiwan, where we consider it a threat to the peace and stability of the Western Pacific, what we're supposed to do is consult with the Congress about what to do. So it's not automatic that we would defend Taiwan, but I daresay that we would feel compelled to offer to defend Taiwan, so it's a very risky situation.
Again, we feel a real affinity for Taiwan. It's a democracy. China is a communist authoritarian state. Taiwan has been our friend for years, since the time of the Civil War and the anti-Japanese war that the Kuomintang government [fought] on the mainland. So we have very close ties to Taiwan, and the support for Taiwan in the U.S. Congress is very, very strong. There are two reasons for that: one is this long affinity between the American people and the people in Taiwan; but the second is that Taiwan has one of the largest and most effective lobbying operations in the United States. Members of Congress have been to Taiwan, [the trips] paid for by Taiwan; Taiwan has put a lot of investments in their districts and done other things that lead people to support Taiwan very strongly. So they often want to show how much they love Taiwan by passing legislation that will strengthen our commitment to Taiwan. The administration pushes back and says, "We think the Taiwan Relations Act is enough." And it's dangerous, because it can lead to misperceptions.
Now, in this debate about Taiwan, how critical is the new set of nuclear weapons policies that the Bush administration was considering before 9/11, namely, moving toward a National Missile Defense program? What bothers China about that, and what's going on in their nuclear weapons program that might be impacted?
The two issues are linked, because China is an internationally recognized nuclear power, but it has the smallest and the technologically most primitive nuclear arsenal-- only about 20 ICBMs. If we were to deploy a National Missile Defense, it would rob China of having a second-strike capability. It would no longer have a nuclear deterrent. And what they fear is that then we could use nuclear blackmail against them. In other words, we could tell them that they must do such and such vis-à-vis Taiwan, or we will threaten them with nuclear weapons.
Now, from the standpoint of the United States, this sounds totally implausible, but if you're sitting in Beijing it's real. So they have objected to National Missile Defense. But, actually, they don't feel as vehement about it as they do about our provision of theater missile defense to Taiwan.
It is really the Russians who have less to lose from a National Missile Defense than the Chinese do, but it is the Russians who are making such a political point of it and objecting the most strenuously, and trying to bring the Chinese into a blocking coalition against the National Missile Defense. I think that if the U.S. and Russians can work this out so that we're able to continue testing and developing a missile defense within the context of the ABM Treaty, without abandoning the ABM Treaty, then China will accommodate itself to a National Missile Defense. But it will feel that it will have to modernize its nuclear arsenal and expand the size of it. It's already started to do that.
It's interesting; they started their program in the early eighties, in response to Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program. They have to anticipate that eventually we will deploy a missile defense, so they will build up. And then, what I worry about is that we will say, "Ah-ha, see, they're building up their nuclear arsenal. They must plan on using it against us and they have hostile intent toward us." So our missile defense program causes China to misperceive that we're hostile to China. We say it's aimed at rogue states, but they say that's just a pretext, it's really to contain China. And we will misperceive their buildup as showing hostile intent toward us. That is the danger
If somehow we can manage the misperceptions, then, simply, their modernizing and expanding, slightly, their nuclear force is actually not a big problem for us.
How will the events of 9/11 affect our relationship, do you think? Will it improve it? Will it have no long-term impact? Or what?
Well, it already has improved it. President Bush and President Jiang Zemin met in Shanghai at the end of October at the APEC meeting, and they pledged their common efforts to wipe out international terrorist networks. Jiang Zemin was one of the first leaders to call President Bush after the September 11th attacks. And China, for one thing, has its own terrorists. In Xinjiang, a northwestern province, there are Muslim leaders who want autonomy, independence, and some of them have joined terrorist organizations affiliated with al Qaeda and trained in al Qaeda training camps. There have been bombings there, even bombings in Beijing. So China is very worried about its own terrorists and glad to cooperate in trying to wipe out the al Qaeda networks. China also welcomes the opportunity to try to show Americans that they really are a responsible power, part of the civilized world, and that they stand on the same side of the issue with us. So it has improved relations.
My own view, however, is that this is not a historic turning point in U.S. - China relations. I think it might be a historic turning point in U.S. - Russia relations. But there still are these human rights issues, still the Taiwan issue. I'm not sure that we're prepared to tell our domestic public, "Look, we're going to push those issues to the sidelines and work in a new way with China than we did in the past." I think the fact that China is a communist country and we're a democracy still creates a real problem. It makes it very, very difficult for us to manage the domestic politics of our relationship with China. And, frankly, for China to manage the domestic politics of their relationship with us.
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