A Look Back at the Zhu Rongji Era

09.16.2013 15:03

A Look Back at the Zhu Rongji Era

A book event attended by key American and Chinese figures was an opportunity to revisit interesting times – and peer ahead with some apprehension

By Robert Kapp

I had a chance to go to a delightful gathering of Chinese and American “veteran cadres” in New York on September 9 to celebrate the publication by the Brookings Institution, in cooperation with the China International Publications Group, of the first volume of English-language translations of speeches and writings by former premier Zhu Rongji. The Chinese title of the original publication is Zhu Rongji Jianghua Shilu, and the English collection has been very sensibly titled Zhu Rongji on the Record.This was a small party; I was surprised and honored to be included. In the hour-long program of brief speeches before lunch, there were two themes:  Zhu the man and a retrospective look at U.S.-China relations in the Zhu (and Jiang Zemin) era. The invited participants included a number of China’s most senior diplomats (Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhang Yesui, Ambassador Cui Tiankai, Permanent Representative to the UN Liu Jieyi) as well as a set of very familiar American faces, mostly from New York and Washington. Key figures from the Clinton administration who had worked directly with Zhu and his administration – Robert Rubin, Charlene Barshefsky and Kenneth Lieberthal – were on hand. Henry Kissinger, who was already in private life by the time Zhu began his tenure as vice premier and premier, offered very thoughtful remarks. A smattering of American business titans, most notably Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who had been the first chairman of Shanghai mayor Zhu’s International Business Advisory Council, were present. And then there a few of us veterans of the U.S.-China relations world itself, the “bridge builders” from the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR ) in particular, and, in my case, the U.S.-China Business Council, which I headed for nearly eleven tumultuous years from the mid-1990s through 2004.

In other words, we all knew one another and often had worked closely together. The event, held at midday, was a real social success, a warm gathering of Chinese and American friends. The emcee of the event, NCUSCR Vice President Jan Berris, noted in her opening remarks that she had known and worked professionally with the six individuals chosen to make brief speeches for a total of nearly two hundred years.

Videotaped remarks, prepared especially for us by Zhu, were really gracious and strangely personal, coming from such a figure so very far away; we so seldom have a chance to see and hear from senior Chinese officials after they retire. I hope others will be permitted to follow his example. The Americans each had an opportunity to offer videotaped greetings to Zhu, and in mine I urged him to encourage those who served with him to make their own recollections available to us outside of China as he had done.

A couple of thoughts stand out in my mind from the entire, gracious program.

First, translation really is a great art. When you are in the presence of great translation, you can feel its central importance. Zhu, on this occasion as on so many in the past, specifically asked the American June Mei to put his documents into English for the Western (principally American) readership. In Mei’s hands, the documents reveal a man of intense practicality, technical ability and administrative skill, but also of unique highly personal qualities. In the hands of a less brilliant translator, much of that would have been lost. In the vast Sino-American encounter that we now live every day, everything depends on successfully crossing the language barrier in its fullest sense. There is no substitute for rigorous formal training, but the best translation, such as this, requires innate abilities. Both countries need to find and nurture their very best Chinese-English translators.

A second stream bubbling through the event was the delicate balance between the past and the future. Those of us in the room had labored in “the trenches” for as much as 30 or 40 years. There was a broad feeling at this “book launch” that we had accomplished a lot and come a long way. Nevertheless, as we reflected respectfully and fondly on Zhu and his accomplishments, and shared stories of exciting moments in U.S.-China relations that we had personally experienced, most of us recognized that much was left undiscussed. My own memory of the mid- and late 1990s, as experienced in Washington is one of frequent, often bitter conflict, both within the United States on questions relating to China, and between our two countries. Looking back, we in both countries did pretty well at preventing U.S.-China relations from simply sliding off a cliff. Think, for example, of what could have happened but did not in 1989 and 1990, or in 1995 and 1996; during the U.S. political wars over China in the last years of the decade; in the tumultuous arm-wrestling between Beijing and Washington over China’s WTO accession, interrupted by the Belgrade embassy bombing; or in the storm over the passage of permanent normal trade relations in the U.S. Congress.

None of this turmoil was on the table at the celebration of Zhu’s new book last week (nor should it have been), but everyone in the room, Chinese and American alike, had lived through all or parts of this period. From it, I suspect we all drew a sense of comfort that it has been possible, after all, for the two sides to work together effectively, both to advance the bilateral relationship to new heights and to prevent that same relationship from crashing onto the rocks. But we still knew we were in the midst of a soft diplomacy moment. In fact, Berris, introducing one distinguished member of the Chinese delegation, noted, “Before there was Joe Nye/the American who coined the term ‘soft diplomacy’/there was Zhou Mingwei!”

What Zhu – and, it must be said, Jiang and hosts of others supporting them in the Chinese government – achieved in the 1990s can be seen in retrospect as a list of historic accomplishments. But, reading into Zhu’s book and reminiscing about him with “old friends” in New York, it was also hard to avoid the sense that what made Zhu and his work possible – the global circumstances and China’s developmental stage at the beginning of the 1990s and throughout the decade – have now given way to new realities. The personal qualities that Zhu brought to his job – clarity of purpose, decisiveness, thoroughness, political and administrative deftness – are in as much demand today, as China approaches the third plenum of the Communist Party’s 18th congress in November, as they were when Zhu began his work. But some (not all!) of  the circumstances that framed Zhu’s approach to his tasks twenty years ago, have faded into history, thanks mainly to China’s very successes in achieving what Zhu set out to accomplish when he held high office.

One of the themes that leaps from the pages of Zhu’s meeting notes, speeches and other documents was his urgent determination to face and act upon difficult realities. China, he told his colleagues, was backward and had to work hard to catch up. China needed to improve its appearance as it faced the world, especially the developed world. China needed to recognize the necessity of studying the advanced economies of the world and learning from their experiences and their technological assets. The urgency of catching up, of doing so by opening the door more and more widely, and in so doing, of reformulating deep seated habits of thought and behavior throughout China’s government and society, rings out clearly from Zhu’s words.

Americans who remember that era will sigh with nostalgia when they read Zhu Rongji on the Record. Recent years have seen a very different set of themes, a different tone in China’s politics and its attitudes toward the nations Zhu was so determined to welcome and equal. China has come a long way. The days of Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, the great reform of state-owned enterprises and the battle for WTO-driven economic opening are far behind. In their place we have ringing alarms about “Western forces,” pervasive official corruption, market discrimination against Western firms, outbursts of rabid nationalism online, and much, much more than can be mentioned here.

The Americans and Chinese so warmly mingling in New York last week personified the feelings of eager anticipation, hope and open-ended possibilities in the Sino-American relationship, in spite of its immense ups and downs. Zhu, remembered, was a tower of modesty, strength, dignity and realistic patriotism. Like their Chinese friends, the Americans at the New York “book launch” expect something big to happen this November. They think of Zhu’s accomplishments with respect: page after page, document after document, we find no sloganeering, no imperial posturing, no anti-foreign outbursts. We watch now, hopefully but apprehensively, to see what the expanded version of reform and opening, repeatedly discussed by Premier Li Keqiang, will turn out to contain, and what it will mean for our two nations’ ability to secure their futures, together or separately.

The author is former president of U.S.-China Business Council and current president of Robert A. Kapp & Associates