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The Fang Lizhi Controversy

By the time of my visit in November 1989, the dissident physicist Fang Lizhi had become a symbol of the divide between the United States and China. Fang was an eloquent proponent of Western-style parliamentary democracy and individual rights with a long history of pushing at the boundaries of official tolerance. In 1957, he had been expelled from the Communist Party as part of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and during the Cultural Revolution he was imprisoned for a year for “reactionary” activities. Rehabilitated after Mao’s death, Fang pursued a successful academic career, speaking out in favor of increased political liberalization. Following the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1986, Fang was again reprimanded, though he continued to circulate calls for reform.

When President Bush visited China in February 1989, Fang was included on the list the U.S. Embassy had recommended to the White House to be invited to a state dinner hosted by the President in Beijing. The Embassy followed what they thought was the precedent of Reagan’s visit to Moscow during which he met self-declared dissidents. The White House approved the list—though probably unaware of the intensity of the Chinese views with respect to Fang. Fang’s inclusion on the invitation list provoked a contretemps between the United States and the Chinese government and within the new Bush administration.²⁹ Eventually it was agreed between the Embassy and the Chinese government that Fang would be seated far from Chinese government officials. On the night of the event, Chinese security services stopped Fang’s car and blocked him from reaching the venue.

Though Fang did not personally participate in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, the student protesters were in sympathy with the principles he advocated, and Fang was believed to be a likely target for government reprisal. In the immediate wake of the June 4 crackdown, Fang and his wife sought refuge at the American Embassy. Several days later, the Chinese government issued an arrest warrant for Fang and his wife for “crimes of counter-propaganda and instigation before and after the recent turmoil.” Government publications demanded that the United States turn over the “criminal who created this violence” or face a deterioration of U.S.-China relations.³⁰ “We had no choice but to take him in,” Bush concluded in his diary, “but it’s going to be a real stick in the eye to the Chinese.”³¹

Fang’s presence in the Embassy was a source of constant tension: the Chinese government was unwilling to let its most prominent critic leave the country for fear that he would agitate from abroad; Washington was unwilling to turn over a dissident espousing liberal democracy to face what was certain to be harsh retribution. In a cable to Washington, Ambassador James Lilley noted of Fang, “He is with us as a constant reminder of our connection to ‘bourgeois liberalism’ and puts us at odds with the regime here. He is a living symbol of our conflict with China over human rights.”³²

In his June 21 letter to Deng Xiaoping, Bush raised “the matter of Fang Lizhi,” regretting that it was a “high-profile wedge driven between us.” Bush defended the American decision to grant Fang refuge—based on, he asserted, “our widely-accepted interpretation of international law”—and averred that “[w]e cannot now put Fang out of the Embassy without some assurance that he will not be in physical danger.” Bush offered the possibility of settling the matter discreetly, noting that other governments had solved similar issues by “quietly permitting departure through expulsion.”³³ But the issue proved resistant to negotiation, and Fang and his wife remained in the Embassy.

During the briefing General Scowcroft had given me prior to my departure for Beijing he familiarized me with the case. He urged me not to raise it, since the administration had said all it could say. But I could respond to Chinese initiatives within the framework of existing policy. I had followed his advice. I had not raised the Fang Lizhi issue, nor had any of my Chinese interlocutors. During my farewell call on Deng, he suddenly introduced the subject after a few desultory comments on the reform problem and used it to suggest a package deal. An extended summary of the relevant exchange will give the flavor of the mood in Beijing six months after Tiananmen:

DENG: I talked with President Bush about the Fang Lizhi case.

KISSINGER: As you know, the President did not know about the invitation to the banquet until it was already public.

DENG: He told me that.

KISSINGER: Since you have raised Fang, I would like to express a consideration to you. I did not raise the issue in any of my other conversations here because I know that it is a matter of great delicacy and affects Chinese dignity. But I think your best friends in America would be relieved if some way could be found to get him out of the Embassy and let him leave the country. There is no other single step which would so impress the American public as having it happen before there is too much agitation.

At this point, Deng got up from his seat and unscrewed the microphones between his seat and mine as a symbol that he wanted to talk privately.

DENG: Can you make a suggestion?

KISSINGER: My suggestion would be that you expel him from China and we agree that as a government we will make no political use of him whatsoever. Perhaps we would encourage him to go to some country like Sweden where he would be far away from the US Congress and our press. An arrangement like this could make a deep impression on the American public, more than a move on any technical subject.

Deng wanted more specific assurances. Was it possible for the American government to “require Fang to write a confession” to crimes under Chinese law; or for Washington to guarantee that “after his expulsion [from China] . . . Fang will say and do nothing opposing China”? Deng broadened this to a request that Washington “undertake the responsibility that it prevent further nonsense being uttered by Fang and by [other Chinese] demonstrators” currently in the United States. Deng was looking for a way out. But the measures he proposed were outside the legal authority of the American government.

DENG: What would you think if we were to expel him after he has written a paper confessing to his crimes?

KISSINGER: I would be surprised if he would do this. I was at the Embassy this morning, but I did not see Fang.

DENG: But he would have to do it if the US side insists. This issue was started by people at the US Embassy including some good friends of yours and including people I thought of as friends.³⁴

What if the American side required Fang to write a confession and after that we could expel him as an ordinary criminal and he can go where he wants. If this won’t do, what about another idea: The US undertakes the responsibility after his expulsion that Fang will say and do nothing opposing China. He should not use the US or another country to oppose the PRC.

KISSINGER: Let me comment on the first proposal. If we ask him to sign a confession, assuming we could even do that, what matters is not what he says in the Embassy but what he says when he gets out of China. If he says that the American government forced him to confess, it will be worse for everyone than if he did not confess. The importance of releasing him is as a symbol of the self-confidence of China. To contradict the caricatures that many of your opponents have made of China in the US.

DENG: Then let’s consider the second proposal. The US would say that after he leaves China, he will make no remarks opposing the PRC. Can the US give such a guarantee?

KISSINGER: Well, I am speaking to you as a friend.

DENG: I know. I am not asking you to undertake the agreement.

KISSINGER: What might be possible is that the US government agrees that the US government will make no use of Fang in any way, for example on the Voice of America or in any way which the President can control. Also we could promise to advise him not to do it on his own. We could agree that he would not be received by the President or given any official status by any US governmental organization.

This led Deng to tell me about a letter he had just received from Bush proposing the visit of a special envoy to brief him on the forthcoming U.S. summit with Gorbachev and to review the Sino-American relationship. Deng accepted the idea and connected it with the Fang discussions as a way to find an overall solution:

In the process of solving the Fang issue, other issues may also be put forward in order to achieve a package solution to all the issues. Now things are like this. I asked Bush to move first; he asks me to move first. I think if we can get a package then there is no question of the order of the steps.

The “package deal” was described by Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in his memoirs:

(1) China would permit Fang Lizhi and his wife to leave the U.S. embassy in Beijing to go to the United States or a third country, (2) The United States, in ways that suited itself, should make an explicit announcement that it would lift the sanctions on China, (3) Both sides should make efforts to conclude deals on one or two major economic cooperation projects, (4) The United States should extend an invitation to Jiang Zemin [just appointed as General Secretary of the Communist Party to replace Zhao Ziyang] to pay an official visit the following year.³⁵

After a further exchange on the modalities of Fang’s possible exile, Deng ended this part of the conversation:

DENG: Will Bush be pleased and agree to this proposal? KISSINGER: My opinion is that he will be pleased with it.

I expected Bush to welcome the demonstration of Chinese concern and flexibility, but I doubted that the pace of improving relations could be as rapid as Deng envisaged.

A renewed understanding between China and the United States had become all the more important because the growing upheaval in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe seemed to undermine the premises of the existing triangular relationship. With the Soviet empire disintegrating, what had become of the motive for the original rapprochement between the United States and China? The urgency was underlined as I left Beijing the evening of my meeting with Deng and learned, at my first stop in the United States, that the Berlin Wall had fallen, shattering the premises of Cold War foreign policy.

The political revolutions in Eastern Europe nearly engulfed the package deal. When I returned to Washington three days later, I reported my conversation with Deng to Bush, Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker at a dinner in the White House. As it turned out, China was not the principal subject. The subject of overriding importance for my hosts at that moment was the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall and an imminent meeting between Bush and Gorbachev—set for December 2–3, 1989, in Malta. Both issues required some immediate decision about tactics and long-term strategy. Were we heading for the collapse of the East German satellite where twenty Soviet divisions were still stationed? Would there now be two German states, albeit a non-Communist East German one? If unification became the goal, by what diplomacy should it be sought? And what should America’s attitude be in foreseeable contingencies?

Amidst the drama surrounding the Soviet collapse in Eastern Europe, Deng’s package deal could not receive the priority it would have elicited in less tumultuous times.

The special mission I discussed with Deng did not take place until mid-December, when Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger visited Beijing for the second time in six months. The visit was not secret as the July trip had been (and at this point, still remained) but was intended to be low-profile to avoid congressional and media controversy. However, the Chinese side engineered a photo op of Scowcroft toasting Qian Qichen, provoking considerable consternation in the United States. Scowcroft would later recount:

[A]s the ritual toasts began at the end of the welcoming dinner given by the foreign minister, the television crews reappeared. It was an awkward situation for me. I could go through with the ceremony and be seen as toasting those the press was labeling “the butchers of Tiananmen Square,” or refuse to toast and put in jeopardy the whole purpose of the trip. I chose the former and became, to my deep chagrin, an instant celebrity—in the most negative sense of the term.³⁶

The incident demonstrated the conflicting imperatives of the two sides. China wanted to demonstrate to its public that its isolation was ending; Washington sought to draw a minimum of attention, to avoid a domestic controversy until an agreement had been reached.

Inevitably, discussion of the Soviet Union occupied much of Scowcroft and Eagleburger’s trip, though in quite the opposite direction from what had become traditional: the subject now was no longer the military menace of the USSR, but its growing weakness. Qian Qichen predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union and described Beijing’s surprise when Gorbachev, on his visit in May, at the height of the Tiananmen demonstrations, asked China for economic assistance. Scowcroft later recounted the Chinese version of these events:

The Soviets did not grasp the economy very well and Gorbachev often did not grasp what he was asking of it. Qian predicted the collapsing economy and the nationalities problems would result in turmoil. “I have not seen Gorbachev taking any measures,” he added. “Gorbachev has called on the Chinese side to provide consumer necessities,” he told us. “ . . . [W]e can provide consumer goods and they will pay back in raw materials. They also want loans. We were quite taken aback when they first raised this. We have agreed to extend some money to them.”³⁷

The Chinese leaders put forward their “package” solution to Scowcroft and linked the release of Fang Lizhi to the removal of American sanctions. The administration preferred to treat the Fang case as a separate humanitarian issue to be settled in its own right.

Further upheavals in the Soviet bloc—including the bloody overthrow of Romania’s Communist leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu—bolstered the sense of siege in the Chinese Communist Party. The disintegration of the Eastern European Communist states also strengthened the hand of those in Washington who argued that the United States should wait for what they saw as the seemingly inevitable collapse of the Beijing government. In this atmosphere, neither side was in a position to depart from its established positions. Negotiations over Fang’s release would continue through the American Embassy, and the two sides would not reach a deal until June 1990—over a year after Fang and his wife first sought refuge and eight months after Deng had put forward his package proposal.³⁸

In the meantime, the annual reauthorization of China’s Most Favored Nation trade status—required for “nonmarket” countries under the terms of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which made Most Favored Nation treatment conditional on emigration practices—was transformed into a forum for congressional condemnation of China’s human rights record. The underlying assumption of the debate was that any agreement with China was a favor, and under the circumstances repugnant to American democratic ideals; trade privileges should thus be predicated on China’s moving toward an American conception of human rights and political liberties. A sense of isolation began to descend on Beijing and a mood of triumphalism on Washington. In the spring of 1990, as Communist governments collapsed in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, Deng circulated a stark warning to Party members:

Everyone should be very clear that, in the present international situation, all the attention of the enemy will be concentrated on China. It will use every pretext to cause trouble, to create difficulties and pressures for us. [China therefore needs] stability, stability, and still more stability. The next three to five years will be extremely difficult for our party and our country, and extremely important. If we stand fast and survive them, our cause will develop quickly. If we collapse, China’s history will regress for several tens of years, even for a hundred years.³⁹

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The Fang Lizhi Controversy

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