China and the Disintegrating Soviet Union
An undercurrent of
all the discussions was the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev had been in Beijing at the beginning of the
Tiananmen crisis, but even while China was being rent by domestic
controversy, the basis of Soviet rule was collapsing in real time
on television screens all across the world as if in slow
motion.
Gorbachev’s dilemmas
were even more vexing than Beijing’s. The Chinese controversies
were about how the Communist Party should govern. The Soviet
disputes were about whether the Communist Party should govern at
all. By giving political reform (glasnost) priority over economic restructuring
(perestroika), Gorbachev had made
inevitable a controversy over the legitimacy of Communist rule.
Gorbachev had recognized the pervasive stagnation but lacked the
imagination or skill to break through its built-in rigidities. The
various supervisory bodies of the system had, with the passage of
time, turned into part of the problem. The Communist Party, once
the instrument of revolution, had no function in an elaborated
Communist system other than to supervise what it did not
understand—the management of a modern economy, a problem it solved
by colluding with what it was allegedly controlling. The Communist
elite had become a mandarin class of the privileged; theoretically
in charge of the national orthodoxy, it concentrated on preserving
its perquisites.
Glasnost clashed with perestroika. Gorbachev wound up ushering in the
collapse of the system that had shaped him and to which he owed his
eminence. But before he did, he redefined the concept of peaceful
coexistence. Previous leaders had affirmed it, and Mao had
quarreled with Khrushchev over it. But Gorbachev’s predecessors had
advocated peaceful coexistence as a temporary respite on the way to
ultimate confrontation and victory. Gorbachev, at the
Twenty-seventh Party Congress in 1986, proclaimed it as a
permanent fixture in the relationship
between Communism and capitalism. It was his way of reentering the
international system in which Russia had participated in the
pre-Soviet period.
On my visits, Chinese
leaders were at pains to distinguish China from the Russian model,
especially Gorbachev. In our meeting in September 1990, Jiang
stressed:
Efforts to find a Chinese Gorbachev will be of no avail. You can see that from your discussions with us. Your friend Zhou Enlai used to talk about our five principles of peaceful coexistence. Well they are still in existence today. It won’t do that there should only be a single social system in the world. We don’t want to impose our system on others and we don’t want others to impose theirs on us.
The Chinese leaders
affirmed the same principles of coexistence as Gorbachev. But they
used them not to conciliate the West, as Gorbachev did, but to wall
themselves off from it. Gorbachev was treated in Beijing as
irrelevant, not to mention misguided. His modernization program was
rejected as ill conceived because it put political reform before
economic reform. In the Chinese view, political reform might be
needed over time, but economic reform had to precede it. Li Ruihuan
explained why price reform could not work in the Soviet Union: when
almost all commodities were in short supply, price reform was bound
to lead to inflation and panic. Zhu Rongji, visiting the United
States in 1990, was repeatedly lauded as “China’s Gorbachev”; he
took pains to emphasize, “I’m not China’s Gorbachev. I’m China’s
Zhu Rongji.”3
When I visited China
again in 1992, Qian Qichen described the collapse of the Soviet
Union as “like the aftermath of an explosion—shock waves in all
directions.” The collapse of the Soviet Union had indeed created a
new geopolitical context. As Beijing and Washington assessed the
new landscape, they found their interests no longer as evidently
congruent as in the days of near alliance. Then, disagreements had
been mainly over the tactics of resisting Soviet hegemony. Now, as
the common opponent withered, it was inevitable that the
differences in the two leaderships’ values and worldviews would
come to the fore.
In Beijing, the end
of the Cold War produced a mixture of relief and dread. On one
level, Chinese leaders welcomed the disintegration of the Soviet
adversary. Mao’s and Deng’s strategy of active, even offensive,
deterrence had prevailed. At the same time, Chinese leaders could
not avoid comparisons between the unraveling of the Soviet Union
and their own domestic challenge. They, too, had inherited an
ancient multiethnic empire and sought to administer it as a modern
socialist state. Though the percentage of non-Han population was
much smaller in China (about 10 percent) than the share of
non-Russians in the Soviet empire (about 50 percent), ethnic
minorities with distinct traditions existed. Moreover, these
minorities lived in regions that were strategically sensitive,
bordering Vietnam, Russia, and India.
No American president
in the 1970s would have risked confrontation with China so long as
the Soviet Union loomed as a strategic threat. On the American
side, however, the disintegration of the Soviet Union was seen as
representing a kind of permanent and universal triumph of
democratic values. A bipartisan sentiment held that traditional
“history” was being superseded: allies and adversaries alike were
moving inexorably toward adopting multiparty parliamentary
democracy and open markets (institutions that, in the American
view, were inevitably linked). Any obstacle standing in the way of
this wave would be swept aside.
A new concept had
evolved to the effect that the nation-state was declining in
importance and the international system would henceforth be based
on transnational principles. Since it was assumed that democracies
were inherently peaceful while autocracies tended toward violence
and international terrorism, promoting regime change was considered
a legitimate act of foreign policy, not an intervention into
domestic affairs.
China’s leaders
rejected the American prediction of the universal triumph of
Western liberal democracy, but they also understood that their
reform program needed America’s cooperation. So in September 1990
they sent an “oral message” through me to President Bush, which
ended with an appeal to the American President:
For over a century, the Chinese people were all along subjected to bullying and humiliation by foreign powers. We do not want to see this wound reopened. I believe that as an old friend of China, Mr. President, you understand the sentiments of the Chinese people. China cherishes Sino-U.S. friendly relations and cooperation which did not come easily, but it cherishes its independence, sovereignty and dignity even more.Against the new background, there is all the more need for Sino-U.S. relations to return to normal without delay. I am sure that you can find a way leading to that goal. And we will make the necessary response to any positive actions that you may take in the interest of better Sino-U.S. relations.
To reinforce what
Jiang had told me personally, Chinese Foreign Ministry officials
gave me a written message to transmit to President Bush. Unsigned,
it was described as a written oral communication—more formal than a
conversation, less explicit than an official note. In addition, the
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs escorting me to the airport handed
me written replies to clarifying questions I had raised during the
meeting with Jiang. Like the message, they had already been
conveyed at the meeting; they were given to me in writing for
emphasis:
Question: What is the
significance of Deng not answering the President’s
letter?
Answer: Deng retired
last year. He already sent the President an oral message saying
that all administrative authority over such affairs has been given
to Jiang.
Question: Why is the
answer oral rather than written?
Answer: Deng has read
the letter. But since he entrusted these matters to Jiang, he asked
Jiang to reply. We wanted to give Dr. Kissinger the opportunity to
convey an oral message to the President because of the role Dr.
Kissinger played in favor of U.S.-Chinese relations.
Question: Is Deng
aware of the content of your reply?
Answer: Of
course.
Question: When you
mention U.S. failure to take “corresponding measures,” what do you
have in mind?
Answer: Biggest
problem is continued U.S. sanctions on China. Would be best if the
President could lift them or even lift de facto. Also the U.S. has
a decisive say in World Bank loans. Another point concerns
high-level visits which was part of the package. . . .
Question: Would you
be willing to consider another package deal?
Answer: It is
illogical since the first package never materialized.
President George H.
W. Bush believed from personal experience that to carry out a
policy of intervention in the most populous nation and the state
with the longest continuous history of self-government was
inadvisable. Prepared to intervene in special circumstances and on
behalf of individuals or specific groups, he thought an
across-the-board confrontation over China’s domestic structure
would jeopardize a relationship vital to American national
security.
In response to
Jiang’s oral message, Bush made an exception to the ban on
high-level visits to China and encouraged his Secretary of State,
James Baker, to visit Beijing for consultations. Relations steadied
for a brief interval. But when the Clinton administration came into
office eighteen months later they returned, for most of the new
administration’s first term, to a roller coaster ride.