Beyond Tiananmen THE POLITICS OF U.S.- CHINA RELATIONS 1989-2000 ROBERT L. SUETTINGER Copyright © 2003 the brookings institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 www.brookings.edu All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Suettinger, Robert L. Beyond Tiananmen: the politics of U.S.-China relations, 1989-2000 / Robert L. Suettinger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8157-8206-3 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations—China. 2. China—Foreign relations—United States. 3. China—History—Tiananmen Square Incident, 1989—Influence. 4. United States—Foreign relations—1989–1993. 5. United States—Foreign relations—1993-2001. I. Title. E183.8.C5S865 2003 327.73051'09'049—dc21 2003006186 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992. Typeset in Sabon Composition by Stephen D. McDougal Mechanicsville, Maryland Printed by R. R. Donnelley Harrisonburg, Virginia To Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001) Teacher, mentor, colleague, friend, and inspiration Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi chapter one Introduction 1 chapter two Getting to Tiananmen 12 chapter three Escalation, Denouement, and Aftermath 41 chapter four The Slow Road to Recovery, 1989–92 88 chapter five New Politics, Old Problems, 1993–94 145 chapter six Crisis over Taiwan, 1995–96 200 chapter seven Presidential Initiatives, 1996–97 264 vii viii contents chapter eight Scandals and Summits, 1997–98 328 chapter nine Back to the Cold, 1999–2000 358 chapter ten Epilogue and Conclusions 410 Notes 443 Index 533 Foreword The transformation of U.S.-China relations is one of the most complex and consequential developments of the twentieth century, and it has major implications for the twenty-first. Therefore the bumpy road of China’s integration into the international community has been a frequent subject of work by individual Brookings scholars and authors, as well as by our Foreign Policy Studies program and our Center for Northeast Asia Policy Studies. This book by Robert L. Suettinger is a timely and distinguished con- tribution to that ongoing part of the Brookings agenda. The U.S.-China relationship was frozen for more than twenty years after the Chinese Communists came to power on the mainland in 1949. The turn- ing point came when President Richard M. Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong recognized they had a common adversary in the Soviet Union. Nixon’s his- toric trip to China in 1972 led to a period of euphoria and goodwill, allowing the two sides to achieve even a degree of accommodation on the difficult question of Taiwan’s status. As China moved into a period of reform and opening to the outside world under Deng Xiaoping, the bilateral relationship flourished. Rapid growth in trade, tourism, and many other exchanges were undergirded by the belief on both sides in a “strategic relationship” of joint opposition to the Soviet Union. Then came the showdown and slaughter on Tiananmen Square in 1989. Students and ordinary citizens of Beijing had taken over the symbolic center of Beijing that spring, demanding dialogue, democracy, and freedom. Day after day, Americans and others around the world watched as hundreds of thousands of Chinese demonstrated peacefully, their student leaders implor- ing the government for basic political rights. When units of the People’s Lib- ix x foreword eration Army stormed into the city late on June 3, 1989, and regained con- trol the next day at enormous cost in lives, the U.S.-China relationship was damaged in a way from which it has yet, fourteen years later, fully to re- cover. Since then, cycles of normalization and engagement, alternating with anger, recrimination, and distrust, have characterized bilateral ties. The fall of communist regimes in eastern Europe and then in the Soviet Union itself made it patently obvious that the Sino-American relationship had lost its original strategic rationale, making restoration of amicable ties that much more difficult to achieve. It is from that tragic and tempestuous episode that Bob picks up the story, drawing from his perspective as a veteran analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department. His twenty-five-year career culminated in an appointment to serve as director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council from March 1994 until October 1997, followed by a tour of duty as national intelligence officer for East Asia on the National Intelligence Council. Bob traces the course of relations from Tiananmen through the end of the Clinton administration, when the U.S. Congress granted “permanent normal trade relations” status to China. He chronicles the Taiwan crisis of 1995–96, Jiang Zemin’s rise to dominance in the PRC’s policy process, and China’s involvement in the campaign finance and spying scandals of 1997–99. He also analyzes the role of economics and trade and sketches what he sees as the prospects for U.S.-China relations in the decades ahead. One of the virtues of this book, which was funded in part by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation, is the justice Bob does to the sometimes neglected connection between domestic politics and foreign policy. As some- one with decades of experience working inside the government, Bob brings to his reconstruction and analysis of events an intuitive understanding of how state-to-state relations often hinge on human and highly personal fac- tors, such as the pique or insecurity of individual leaders, rather than on abstract calculations of national interests and goals. With its solid grounding in the real world of policymaking and diplomacy, this book is a model of the kind of research that we at Brookings are proud to support and publish. April 2003 Strobe Talbott Washington, D.C. President foreword xi Acknowledgments I have drawn on a wide variety of materials in primary and secondary sources, as well as the work of a growing and talented field of sinologists in the United States and America watchers in China. For this project, I have benefited immensely from access to and extended conversations with key participants in the policy process, people who considered, made, and implemented important decisions for the U.S. government on its approach to China. Among them are Michael Armacost, Jeffrey A. Bader, Samuel R. Berger, Kurt Campbell, William Clark, W. Bowman Cutter, William A. Danvers, Carl Ford, Charles W. Freeman Jr., Sandra J. Kristoff, W. Anthony Lake, Deborah M. Lehr, Kenneth Lieberthal, James R. Lilley, Winston Lord, Joseph Massey, Michel Oksenberg, Douglas Paal, Daniel Poneman, Stanley O. Roth, J. Stapleton Roy, Brent Scowcroft, Susan Shirk, and Richard Solomon. I am indebted to numerous scholars and officials in the United States and China who advised and informed me about aspects of bilateral relations during this period but are not able or willing to be acknowledged by name. No book is the product of a single individual’s work, and I acknowledge the gracious advice and assistance from people who have aided me with re- search or read critically various portions of the manuscript. Adrianne Moore helped out in early research on Tiananmen-related information. Thomas J. Christensen, Paul Heer, David Michael Lampton, and J. Stapleton Roy re- viewed the entire manuscript, while Bates Gill, Billy Huff, John Kamm, Mickey Kantor, Dimon Liu, James Mulvenon, Alan Romberg, Lee Sands, Anne Thurston, and Bruce Wells reviewed and commented on various chapters. James Steinberg reviewed the manuscript twice, commenting on substantive xi xii acknowledgments issues and correcting specific facts, as he was an active participant in the policy process on China. Michael Armacost and Richard Haass were enor- mously supportive in guiding and encouraging the project in its early stages. The staff in the Brookings Press was remarkably helpful. Theresa Walker edited the final manuscript, Susan Woolen supervised the cover design pro- cess, Vicki Chamlee proofread the book, and Enid Zafran prepared the in- dex. Janet Walker, managing editor, also contributed to the editing of the final manuscript. I greatly appreciate the help I received from the Smith Richardson Foun- dation staff, especially Samantha Ravich, Allan Song, and Marin Strmecki. Last but certainly not least, I thank my wife, Sue-Jean, my children, and other family members for their faith and support in the long and difficult process of writing a first book. chapter one Introduction It has been fourteen years since soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) raced into the center of Beijing from their suburban encampments, ordered to recover “at any cost” the capital city’s most important symbolic landmark, Tiananmen Square, from student dem- onstrators who had occupied it for seven weeks. Fourteen years since the terror, the noise, the fires, the shooting, the bloodshed, the screams of rage and fear. Fourteen years since the collapse of the Communist Party’s leader- ship cohesion and what remained of its moral authority, causing it to resort to force and intimidation to maintain its grip on power. Fourteen years since the United States and other Western countries recoiled from China in horror and disgust, expelling it from the company of modern civilized nations through sanctions of various kinds. Fourteen years since the relationship between the United States and China went instantly from amity and strategic cooperation to hostility, distrust, and misunderstanding. Time has healed many of the wounds of those terrible days of June 1989. The dead have been laid to rest, if not accounted for or forgotten; the wounded have been treated and healed. Most of those arrested and imprisoned in the massive roundup that followed June 4 have completed their sentences and been released.