OPINION:
For more than half a century, American statesmen have been told that the most delicate business with the communists who rule China must be conducted quietly.
Do not embarrass Beijing. Allow its leaders to “save face.” Trust private assurances. Above all, keep talking behind closed doors.
Few doctrines in modern American diplomacy have produced so much credulity with so little to show for it.
The record of quiet diplomacy should have discredited it long ago. Beijing made solemn promises regarding World Trade Organization obligations and market access, the South China Sea’s non-militarization, Hong Kong’s autonomy, human rights, intellectual property, cyber activities, international norms and more.
Again and again, the promises were broken, evaded or reinterpreted once Beijing secured what it wanted. Again and again, Washington received another private assurance — and Beijing pocketed another public advantage.
Quiet diplomacy survived because it has created its own constituency: a professional class of China brokers whose influence depends on the proposition that Beijing remains one discreet conversation away from moderation.
Wall Street wants market access. Silicon Valley wants customers and supply chains. K Street discovers clients. Universities want Chinese money, students and access. Think tanks acquired programs, consultants and “distinguished fellows.” Former officials and has-been politicians discovered that Beijing could provide something Washington could no longer: relevance.
Thus emerges one of the strangest features of the U.S.-China relationship: Americans explaining to other Americans why the Chinese Communist Party must not be offended.
Beijing hardly needs to lobby Washington directly when prominent Americans do the work for it.
This ecosystem has also produced the Blame-America-first China expert, for whom Chinese aggression can usually be traced to something Washington did to make Beijing insecure.
China militarizes the South China Sea? America provoked it. Beijing threatens Taiwan? Washington failed to reassure it. The People’s Liberation Army expands? The Pentagon started an arms race.
There is always context for Beijing and culpability for Washington.
The habit of self-deception goes back to the opening of China itself. President Nixon and Henry Kissinger achieved an important strategic breakthrough, but they also helped establish a style of personalized, secretive diplomacy in which Beijing enjoyed extraordinary control over the setting, interpretation and information.
Consequential conversations with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were conducted exclusively through Chinese interpreters trusted by the communist leadership, including Nancy Tang and Wang Hairong, Mao’s personal interpreters and bedroom Barbarian handlers, rather than the usual American diplomatic interpreters.
The CCP’s senior interpreters are not merely linguistic technicians but well-indoctrinated, sophisticated political insiders serving the communist regime. When one side exercises disproportionate control over interpretation, opportunities to shade nuance, frame concepts and exploit ambiguity are obvious.
Ambiguity mattered. What did “China” mean? What did Washington promise Beijing regarding Taiwan? What constituted sovereignty?
These distinctions became the vocabulary of disputes that lasted for generations.
No American president should conduct consequential diplomacy with a CCP leader behind closed doors in a controlled-information environment without capable American interpreters, note takers, experts and a precise institutional record. The fate of nations should never depend on whether an American leader believes he has established a special relationship with the man across the table.
CCP leaders are exceptionally skilled at encouraging exactly that illusion.
They stage-manage encounters with ceremonial grandeur, banquets and carefully selected proverbs. Communist apparatchiks suddenly appear as philosopher-kings dispensing 5,000 years of Chinese wisdom. Foreign visitors are frequently enchanted. Chinese people, however, are often befuddled and far less impressed.
Many supposedly profound aphorisms delivered to foreigners are ordinary expressions dressed for diplomatic export. The performance recalls the political satire film “Being There,” in which Chance, the gardener, says banal things about plants and seasons while sophisticated people convince themselves that they are hearing profound observations about economics and civilization.
The CCP has perfected the geopolitical version of Chance the Gardener.
Jiang Zemin famously demonstrated his erudition before foreigners by reciting President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, a Leninist dictator displaying his sophistication by quoting one of history’s greatest statements of government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Xi Jinping often displays an uncontrollable desire to be regarded by foreign leaders as intellectually monumental and culturally erudite, while domestically, he is widely lampooned as a clueless, vacuous Pooh with a tragically hopeless gaffe machine.
One wonders whether the greater absurdity belongs to Mr. Jiang and Mr. Xi — or to the Western audiences impressed by their performance.
The same credulity underlies the Western obsession with Chinese “face.” We are warned that public criticism will humiliate Beijing because Chinese culture supposedly places extraordinary importance on avoiding embarrassment. This is presented as cultural sophistication. Too often, it is paternalism.
Chinese people are not exotic, premodern creatures who must be protected from embarrassment by enlightened Western custodians. More important, the men ruling Beijing are not Confucian sages nursing ancient sensitivities. They are officials of a Marxist-Leninist party commanding nuclear weapons, intelligence services, propaganda organs and the world’s largest military.
Indeed, explaining CCP behavior as “Chinese culture” gets history backward. Marxism-Leninism is not an ancient Chinese inheritance. It is a radical Western ideology imported into China and imposed through a Leninist party-state.
Treating Leninism as Chinese culture is one of the West’s most persistent — and patronizing — analytical tragedies.
Quiet diplomacy also frightens America’s friends. When an American leader disappears behind closed doors with a CCP general secretary, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and others naturally wonder what Washington might concede at their expense. Even when no concession occurs, secrecy breeds uncertainty, and uncertainty among allies is itself a strategic victory for Beijing.
None of this means that America should stop talking to China. Nuclear powers must communicate, and some negotiations require confidentiality.
Still, confidentiality is a diplomatic technique. It should never become a diplomatic theology.
The presumption should be transparency. Important understandings should be written down. Capable American interpreters should be present. Allies should be consulted. Chinese promises should be recorded publicly whenever possible, and violations should be publicly exposed.
Private assurances should count for nothing until matched by observable behavior.
Above all, Washington should stop worrying so much about embarrassing the CCP. Embarrassment can be useful.
A dictatorship that spends enormous resources censoring information, imprisoning critics, rewriting history and operating a gigantic propaganda apparatus is telling us something important: Truth and transparency are vulnerabilities of the regime.
Sunlight does what another elegant dinner in Beijing cannot: It raises the price of lying, reassures allies and denies Beijing the ability to tell different stories to different audiences.
For more than 50 years, American diplomacy has too often assumed that the CCP becomes more reasonable when nobody is watching. The evidence suggests precisely the opposite.
Behind closed doors, Beijing can flatter, intimidate, reinterpret, divide and promise. In public, it must answer for what it has actually done.
The CCP rarely yields to whispers behind closed doors; it yields when the truth is exposed, when diplomacy is conducted transparently, and when the cost of defiance becomes unbearable. History has yet to prove otherwise.
• Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. His “Red Horizon” column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.
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