Authors: Kim Ghattas
Now, “American Mrs. Clinton” was back. She was no longer just a First Lady with a
soft agenda of human rights; she was secretary of state of the United States of America,
and she was coming to do business. This was also what she had been trying to telegraph
to Beijing with her comment about a comprehensive relationship with China. There was
a method to Hillary’s off-script comments, even though it wasn’t always immediately
apparent to others and could come at a high cost.
* * *
SAM landed at the Beijing airport on a cold night. The day had started in South Korea
and was finally coming to an end in China. In a black belted coat and red scarf, Clinton
walked out of the plane and down steps lined with red lights. The ice and snow had
kept away the marching bands and guard of honor, and Clinton was escorted to her waiting
limousine on the tarmac by China’s assistant foreign minister.
The non-newsworthy passengers quietly got out of the back door of the plane down the
steps lined with blue lights. Jake had slept an average of two hours a night since
leaving Washington six days earlier. The biting cold on the tarmac reinvigorated him
briefly before he sunk into his seat on the overheated staff minibus. Jake had been
to China once before, as a teenager, when his parents had packed him, his three brothers,
and his sister on one of the first nonstop flights to Beijing from the United States
in the spring of 1996. His parents liked to explore; Jake learned the world capitals
on the globe that lived on their kitchen table.
On the tarmac, staffers from the U.S. embassy guided us to our vehicles. “Press! This
way! Press! Vans at the back of the motorcade!” Three vans were usually assigned for
the traveling press corps. As we drove into the city, U.S. embassy staff handed out
the usual press packs with city maps, embassy information, and a hand-sized binder
booklet with the number 30 written on the cover in black, the Chinese and American
flags sharing the empty space inside the zero. The People’s Republic of China and
the United States had established diplomatic relations thirty years ago. The booklet
contained cultural tips and useful Chinese phrases, information about tourist sites
and China’s economy and legal system (“China does not have an independent judiciary.
Corruption and conflicts of interests are acknowledged problems”), in addition to
some peculiar extras. The booklet included a biography of the secretary and her delegation
members (she was a best-selling author and resided in New York), and several unusual
biographies of the Chinese officials she would be meeting. The Chinese president Hu
Jintao, for example, was sixty-seven and hadn’t intended to go into politics. He had
wanted to become a hydropower expert. He was a member of the dance team at his university
and occasionally “danced solo at parties. He also plays tennis fairly well.”
The press booklets were often assembled with information provided by the host country,
and this biography seemed to originate from the Communist Party’s official newspaper,
the
People’s Daily
.
The Chinese were perfect hosts. They viewed hospitality, ceremony, and carefully cultivated
personal relationships as tools of statecraft. They treated Clinton to a crescendo
of official meetings, from the foreign minister all the way up to the president. The
Chinese took it all very seriously—this wasn’t just a series of pleasant get-to-know-you
meetings. There were official talks to be had, inside the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse,
in the middle of a one-hundred-acre compound of ancient villas scattered between ginkgo
trees and frozen lakes. Kissinger had stayed here in 1971 when he had established
the first direct contact with Communist China in over twenty years. Before the age
of Twitter and the twenty-four-hour news cycle, Kissinger had slipped out of Pakistan
unnoticed, leaving reporters behind, to make his secret trip and pull off his diplomatic
coup.
If the Chinese art of feng shui is meant to reflect the flow of energies and purpose
of a space, then the room where Clinton and foreign minister Yang Jiechi met showed
a great deal about how the Chinese viewed their position. In a long rectangular room
with small crystal chandeliers, two long tables faced each other, separated by three
large potted azaleas. A small Chinese flag marked Yang’s seat at the left table; an
American one marked Clinton’s on the right. Officials from both sides sat facing one
another; the Chinese delegation was larger than the American one. The setup was decidedly
strange. Diplomatic talks usually take place on either side of one wide rectangular
table, not two tables, five feet apart. The Chinese seemed to want to evoke their
growing sense of importance, emphasizing the gulf between them and their counterpart.
The agenda for the talks had been set in advance, as always, and the two sides went
through the script. There would be no surprises in Beijing, especially not in a first
meeting. The Chinese presented their points. Clinton followed. The economy, climate
change, North Korea. Yang spoke English so they were able to cover a lot of ground,
without wasting any time in translation. The Chinese recited their usual “one-China
principle.” Taiwan, the rebellious, separatist island that claimed the title of Republic
of China, was a sensitive issue, a key interest for mainland China. Clinton assured
them that this administration would continue to abide by the thirty-year-old U.S.
policy toward Taiwan. Washington did not support independence for Taiwan but at the
same time it did not recognize China’s claim of sovereignty over the island. The Chinese
knew that Washington would maintain strong ties with Taiwan and sell them fighter
jets, just as the United States knew that China would protest loudly when it happened.
But the power balance between the United States and China had been slowly changing
over the last few years, and this shift grew even more perceptible in the months preceding
Obama’s inauguration. While America’s economy was grinding to a halt and the international
financial system imploded, China had put on a breathtaking display of its culture
and riches. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was conceived as an expression
of China’s resurgence and was broadcast to a global audience for all to see.
6
China’s economy continued to grow at a clipping pace. Real estate was booming, and
though the world was buying less, Chinese goods were still being flown out to the
four corners of the globe. The grand old economies of the West were gutted by recession,
and the Chinese saw the financial crisis of 2008 as America’s comeuppance. The Chinese
had a new swagger to their step, flying around the world, their large delegations
walking confidently through the lobby of the State Department, filling up rooms in
meetings with officials, and confidently asserting their wishes. American officials
saw the swagger and thought, I guess that’s what it looked like all these years when
we walked into a room.
Obama had been careful to minimize the China bashing that seemed an intrinsic part
of American presidential campaigns, and the Chinese had noticed. They’d heard all
the talk about America reaching out to foes. And then there was Clinton speaking softly
about human rights. It all fed the perception that the new American administration
was being overly deferential to the Chinese. They saw a picture with “decline” written
all over it. But as eager as China was to show off its new ascendance on the world
stage, the country’s continued growth was still linked to the United States. If the
Chinese wanted to enact their plans—to push back against American hegemony and assert
their authority in the Pacific—the country needed a smooth beginning with the Obama
administration. They were keen to get off on the right foot with Clinton while they
studied her more closely.
Yang, the square-faced foreign minister with a large forehead and gold-rimmed glasses
who sat facing Clinton across the potted azaleas, had lived through the changes in
both countries. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he had been an English interpreter
for Deng Xiaoping, the man who rose out of Communist Party purges and the repression
of the Cultural Revolution to lead China into modernity. Deng served as China’s top
leader from 1978 to the early 1990s, and his policies set his country on the path
that had led to its current status as an economic superpower. Yang had risen through
the ranks steadily, and at the age of fifty-seven he became China’s youngest foreign
minister. He was also a graduate of the London School of Economics and had served
at the Chinese embassy in Washington twice, once in the mid-1980s and then as ambassador
from 2001 to 2005. Yang had walked on the streets of the American capital as the United
States went from budget surplus to crippling debt.
Clinton’s own swagger and persona helped to mellow the often stilted diplomatic exchanges
with Chinese officials. Dai Bingguo, the energetic smiling state councilor who was
China’s top foreign policy official, outranking Yang, hosted Clinton to lunch. Dai
looked much younger than his sixty-eight years and told Clinton she looked younger
and more beautiful than on television. Hillary blushed. “Well, we will get along very
well,” she said, a hint of flirtatiousness in her voice. Soon they were talking about
their children, and Dai was showing her pictures of his grandchildren.
Later that evening, Yang hosted Clinton at a magnificent dinner at the Diaoyutai.
Ten Chinese and ten American officials sat around two large tables. Waiters delivered
food simultaneously to each diner in an elegant dance. Hors d’oeuvres of “prawn ball
with Thai sauce” and “laver and fish ball” arrived on the table in an elaborate dry-ice
presentation as a dense foglike vapor rose from the plates.
Throughout the visit, Clinton charmed her impassive hosts with her knowledge of Chinese
proverbs. “When you are in a common boat, you need to cross the river peacefully together”
was her way of saying that China and the United States had to work together to prop
up the world economy. Premier Wen Jiabao reciprocated with his own proverb, also from
Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
. “Progress together, hand in hand.” This proverb diplomacy would become a constant
in Clinton’s exchange with China.
Unlike in democracies like Japan or South Korea, public diplomacy events in tightly
controlled Communist China made the country’s officials nervous, and they tried to
manage Clinton’s schedule as much as they could, so she tried to find ways to deliver
her message. She gave a web-chat interview hosted by the government-controlled
China Daily
newspaper and went beyond just answering the questions, weaving her message about
cooperation into the answers. Ten million Chinese later accessed the interview. She
told women’s rights activists meeting with her inside the U.S. embassy that change
only comes when people stand up and say, “I am not going to be quiet.” On Sunday,
before leaving, she attended a service at a state-approved church in Beijing. But
none of Clinton’s actions alarmed the Chinese: this was not the same shrill woman
who had issued her rallying cry about human rights and women’s rights all those years
ago. She was not going to harangue them at every instance. And she was also no Condoleezza
Rice, who could be gracious and warm in public and then shockingly tough and curt
in private. Handling Clinton and America would be easy. It would take the Chinese
more than a year to realize how wrong their reading had been.
* * *
By the end of the seven-day trip, Jake, Huma, and the others around Hillary felt the
trip had been a resounding success. Asia had weathered fifteen speeches, eleven media
interviews, six town halls and round tables, and seven press conferences, and Hillary
had started to find her voice as secretary of state. It was time to go home, to go
to sleep. Almost.
SAM couldn’t fly more than nine hours without refueling; Washington and even Alaska
were too far for a direct flight home. So after three hours in the air, the secretary
was back in Japan, at the Yokota Air Base for an hour-long pit stop. Instead of staying
on the plane, Clinton walked into a hangar where more than three hundred soldiers
and their families were eagerly waiting to shake hands and take pictures with her.
She looked tired, but a pink scarf lifted her complexion. Ever the politician, Hillary
tapped into the energy of the crowd.
Bedraggled and exhausted, a few of the senior officials had lumbered out of the plane
to stretch their legs before the next seven-hour flight. They stood in the back of
the hangar to shelter from the freezing cold outside and watched the show.
“If every one of her trips is going to be run like a campaign stop, we’re all going
to fall apart,” one of them complained.
The Asia whirlwind became the template for every trip Clinton took in her four years
as secretary of state.
3
FROM WASHINGTON TO BEIRUT
There were, naturally, trips that were exceptions to the Hillary template, where protocol
and pomp had no place—war-ravaged countries where tanks were part of the urban landscape,
where America was a sworn enemy for many, where marines got blown up. Countries where
the arrival of an American secretary of state was kept tightly concealed until landing,
and Fred had final approval on the secretary’s minute movements.
One spring evening in April, the State Department sent out an e-mail for wide distribution
to all journalists around town with guidance for the next day’s schedule.
Friday, April 24, 2009
SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON: NO PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS
THERE WILL BE A DAILY PRESS BRIEFING: At approximately 12:30 p.m. with Robert A. Wood
But that morning, SAM was waiting at Andrews Air Force Base to take us overseas. The
State Department traveling press corps had received another e-mail, a couple of days
earlier, with a heading in screaming capitals.