As the festive season begins, I’m wishing all my readers a happy holiday with family and friends, that you had a good year, and that an even better year awaits! I’ve certainly been incredibly fortunate in 2024, not least because I began this channel! So a big thank you to the 1,239 of you for tuning in and making my year special.
Last week, I shared Part 1 of Prof. Susan Shirk’s oral history on her time in the State Department. This is Part 2. For those of you who missed Part 1, let me re-introduce Susan. Prof. Susan Shirk is a research professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, director-emeritus of the 21st Century China Center, and director-emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). She is one of the West’s foremost thinkers on Chinese elite politics and political institutions, who, having first travelled to China in the early ‘70s, has witnessed the country from the Mao to the Xi eras. Between 1997 and 2000, Susan served in the Clinton administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, overseeing U.S. relations with China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia.
Today, we have something special for you. On May 7, 1999, during the Kosovo War, an American B2 stealth bomber dropped bombs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, destroying the building and killing three state media journalists. A public humiliation to China and diplomatic disaster, the event immediately provoked strong reactions and suspicions. Was it a mistake? Or was it intentional? The Chinese government protested and shut down diplomatic communications with the U.S., and public reports emerged claiming the bombing was intentional and that China was secretly aiding the Serbs.
As the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Prof. Susan Shirk directly oversaw the diplomatic crisis and its aftermath. Today, she shares her inside stories, as well as the greater context of U.S.-China relations at the century’s close.
Many other things were happening around the same time: Jiang Zemin’s state visit in the U.S., WTO negotiations, Taiwan’s democratisation, Falun Gong Protests at Zhongnanhai, the Asian Financial Crisis — and we will cover all of it in today’s excerpt, which was edited for clarity and brevity.
Enjoy!
Leo
For quick navigation to the specific sections:
Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji and the party’s charm offensive in the States
The 1992 Consensus used to be Taiwan’s position, now it’s China’s
Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, and the party’s charm offensive in the States
Could you talk us through Jiang Zemin’s 1997 visit to the U.S.?
It was a moment when both governments wanted to go all out to stabilise the relations. The visit was great. Jiang Zemin was really happy. Jiang was the first Chinese leader who was simultaneously the general secretary of the party, president, and head of the military commission. Deng thought it was important to strengthen the leader institutionally. Before then, the “president” had little power. The president’s main role is to go around the world representing China as the head of state. Jiang Zemin loved that role.
He’s a natural.
We lavished respect on him. We didn’t have much else to give because we were constrained by domestic politics. What we could lavish was respect. He loved that. His staff were worried about demonstrators. And you could hear them, especially in Honolulu, and mostly about Tibet.
I was never very impressed by Jiang Zemin… He liked to show off his Western learning and quote poetry or Shakespeare. He seemed to lack gravitas and seriousness about the issues.
I was never very impressed by Jiang Zemin. I sat in on meetings, and he always seemed a little clownish. He liked to show off his Western learning and quote poetry or Shakespeare. He seemed to lack gravitas and seriousness about the issues. But President Clinton always said to his staff, “It’s really easy to underestimate this guy. So don’t underestimate him. He’s a very good domestic politician. He knows what he’s doing.” Clinton had more respect for him than we did. But he handled himself well on that trip. It was a real ice-breaker.
Is it fair to say he managed to charm the U.S. political establishment? He’s not the typical stern, stiff-faced communist cadre.
He tried, I don’t know that they were so charmed by him. He tried to show warmth, and they found him likeable.
One awkward thing happened. Jesse Helms — chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a southern Republican — was pushing to appoint a special ambassador to Tibet, which would offend China. Our official position is that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China. So the State Department said we cannot have an ambassador to Tibet. But what we had to give way on was to have a Special Commissioner for Tibet to address the issues related to Tibet and promote dialogue between Beijing and Tibet.
They insisted on announcing it publicly just when Jiang Zemin was visiting the United States. How insulting — outrageous. But we had to go along with it. Then, my job was to tell [China’s foreign minister] Qian Qichen we were doing this.
You were the messenger.
I was — and so embarrassed. I had to explain to him that the timing was unfortunate. It was imposed upon us by Congress. We had no choice. This is how the American system works. I didn’t go into any great length. I just said, “We’re doing it. It’s going to be announced today.”
What was his response?
He didn’t say anything rude to me. He was cool. “This is most unfortunate, but thanks for letting me know.”
What was your impression of Zhu Rongji on his trip?
Oh my gosh, he was fantastic. So impressive. Smart, sensible, dignified, and didn’t lose his temper with anybody either. He was respected by his delegation.
How did Bill Clinton interact with Chinese diplomats and other visitors?
The thing that always impressed me about President Clinton — we’d bring people to the Oval Office. He would make eye contact and speak to the visitor in English. But when the consecutive translator spoke, he didn’t take his eyes away from the visitor. Think about that. That’s not easy to do. Usually, when the translator is speaking, you sit back and think about what you will say next. But he was working his interpersonal magic on the visitor. He was just a superb communicator that way. Madeleine Albright also had a wonderful way of using humour. She had a great way of making personal connections.
And how did the communist officials respond to American diplomats? You mentioned in our previous conversation that things used to be stiff in the ‘70s.
Things got looser, for sure. And Qian Qichen was an incredibly impressive diplomat. I feel fortunate to have observed him when Jiang Zemin came to the United States. He would also visit the UN General Assembly and meet with Madeleine Albright. I remember one meeting vividly where we had been after the Chinese side to stop selling anti-ship missiles to Iran. We weren’t getting very far, but we brought it up in all these meetings because they put the American Navy in the Gulf at risk.
And then, at the UN General Assembly, Madeleine Albright had a meeting with Qian Qichen. He had spent part of that morning at the Israeli embassy. And before we even raised that issue, he just, out of the blue, says, “Oh, by the way, we’re no longer going to sell the anti-ship missiles to Iran.”
It was the one time I can remember that one of your objectives had suddenly been achieved. He said, “In my discussions at the Israeli embassy, I gained a better understanding of the risks of these missiles.” I don’t think he decided on the spot. The decision would have been made before he came, but still, I was struck by the fact that the argument from the Israelis seemed to influence the decision.
China’s rising place in U.S. foreign policy
We were giving China a lot of respect and boosting China up as a global power. Because if you look at the speeches from that time, our goal was to help China emerge into the world as a responsible power. And it appeared to be working quite well.
China was quite important in the Cold War era because it was a check against Soviet power. Now that the Soviet Union was gone, what was the place for China in American foreign policy?
We wanted to get China to cooperate with the United States on many issues like nonproliferation, the environment — “global public goods,” I would say.
We started having these open-ended security dialogues, with high-level meetings with China. We started building in time for unscripted discussion of foreign policy issues in various parts of the world — Africa, South Asia, the Middle East. We were giving China a lot of respect and boosting China up as a global power. Because if you look at the speeches from that time, our goal was to help China emerge into the world as a responsible power. And it appeared to be working quite well.
We managed to cooperate on a lot of foreign policy issues. We didn’t really accomplish much in terms of human rights, but we were creating a kind of global order that China was part of. When we had the Asian financial crisis, we created the G20. Because originally, we tried to get China to come to the G7, G8. We were so generous and open-minded we invited the Russians in, right? And we said, “Okay, let’s make it the G9. Let’s invite China.” China didn’t accept the invitation.
I remember when India tested a nuclear weapon, Madeleine Albright had to figure out, “How are we going to respond?” She felt we needed to have China be part of that response. She was in Europe. I think she was at a G7, G8 meeting, and she called Tang Jiaxuan, the Chinese foreign minister, and said, “Why don’t you come to the G8? Join the G8 meeting at least, even if you don’t want to formally join right now, and we can discuss what to do in Geneva.”
He said, “Let me talk to my colleagues; I’ll get back to you.” He came back and said, “No, sorry.”
Why do you think they turned it down?
They always felt, “Oh, that’s the West. That’s not us.” Even though Japan was there. I have no idea. They came to the G20, though. They liked the G20. But basically, China always liked the Security Council more than any other institution.
They have the veto there.
It’s their favourite.
Did the Asian financial crisis affect the U.S.-China relationship in other ways?
That was very important because it actually became an issue that China and the United States cooperated on, because China took, I think, quite a responsible position on the Asian financial crisis.
We did not want them to devalue their currency, as other countries had. We worked with the IMF, and China did not devalue their currency. That wasn’t easy for them, so we gave them a lot of credit. Zhu Rongji was in charge of managing this whole thing.
It was in the lead-up to Clinton’s visit to China that we expressed our appreciation for China’s responsible position. They didn’t even critique the IMF’s role and cooperated with the IMF. They supplemented it by creating a currency swap system with Korea and Japan. It was the start of a trilateral cooperation among them. In some ways, it stimulated positive developments in U.S.-China relations.
How the U.S. accidentally bombed China’s Belgrade embassy
One thing I really wanted to capture is your experience around the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Could you talk about that?
I was on my way back from work, and I got this call from the State Department and learned that there had been this bombing by NATO of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. I turned around and went back to work.
My approach was, “We just have to go all out to apologise.” I thought that, regardless of how this happened, we would need to apologise profusely to the Chinese because otherwise they would never let us forget our failure to apologise. We would hear about it for decades, just as what they’ve said to the Japanese: “You never apologised for all these historical atrocities during World War II.” The whole issue of apology is diplomatically and in foreign policy very fraught.
We did everything we could to try to preserve a decent relationship.
So that’s what we tried to do. President Clinton tried to speak to President Jiang Zemin. They wouldn’t respond. We went with Madeleine Albright to the Chinese embassy in Washington to apologise. They were pretty rude. We managed to do it, but it was a tense situation. The president went to sign the condolence book. We had the ambassador in Beijing fly a flag at half-mast and offer to go to the airport to meet the plane with the three journalists who were killed in the attack. President Clinton made some public remarks from the White House. We did everything we could to try to preserve a decent relationship.
We tried to investigate how we made such a terrible mistake. I was in charge of pulling together the explanation. That meant working with the Pentagon, the military, and the CIA, because the targeting was being done by the CIA. The CIA was incredibly helpful and forthcoming, whereas the military and the Pentagon were not. They were defensive about everything.
After we had the explanation, we went to Beijing to present it to the Chinese government and to negotiate compensation for the victims and their families and for the destruction of the building. I went with Tom Pickering — the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, a very seasoned, brilliant diplomat — to have those discussions.
Originally, Tom Pickering said, “I’m not going unless I have a uniformed military officer with us because the State Department did not make this stupid mistake. The military did.” Much to our dismay, they refused to send a uniformed military officer. The best we could get was the deputy head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he wasn’t even in uniform. But we had no choice. We had to go. We had someone from the CIA, and someone from the legal department of the State Department to help with the negotiations.
The other thing Tom Pickering insisted on was that we weren’t going to go commercial. We had to go on an official plane. It was really tough with our legs all intertwined with one another in this tiny little jet. We presented the explanation, we apologised, and negotiated compensation.
How was the explanation received in China?
Back when the Chinese government and the official media announced the bombing, they talked about the flagrant bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade with no recognition that it was an accident, the implication being that it was on purpose.
Of course, there was no reason for President Clinton to approve the bombing of the Chinese embassy. It’s the last thing in the world he wanted to do. He was trying to stabilise relations with China. But there was suspicion in China that, “Okay, maybe President Clinton himself didn’t want to bomb the Chinese embassy, but there must be anti-China officials in the military or different agencies” — a Tom Clancy-type plot to subvert relations with China.
We presented the explanation, and we did the negotiations. Still, much to my frustration, largely due to the public statements of the Chinese government, people in China believed it was done intentionally. The university students in Beijing got angry and wanted to demonstrate their resentment and anger against the United States. The Chinese government facilitated the protests. They provided buses to students at Peking University, Tsinghua, and other universities to go to the American Embassy. They did the same thing in Chengdu and other cities where we have consulates.
They did that because they were nervous. This was in May of 1999, just a few weeks before the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen demonstrations. The Chinese leadership is always insecure, particularly under Jiang Zemin. They were worried that the students would repeat the demonstrations in Tiananmen or Zhongnanhai and protest against the Chinese leadership for being too weak in the face of American pressure, that the Americans felt they could disrespect and harm China to the extent of bombing a Chinese embassy in another country. In order to protect themselves, they diverted the student protests over to our embassy and consulates in China.
The students threw Molotov cocktails, paint, and bricks at the embassy. Our ambassador and a few other diplomats were inside, and there are these photographs of [ambassador] Jim Sasser in the embassy’s windows, almost like he was a captive. The police allowed the protests to occur. They’d been bussed in, and they didn’t try to stop them. It was infuriating and worrisome for the safety and security of our diplomats.
I am 100 percent personally sure this not purposeful. It was accidental.
We tried hard through the embassy to get the Chinese government to control and stop the protests, which lasted for a few days. Even today, many people in China — probably most people in China — believe that the bombing was on purpose.
Recently, with the Chinese government offering tacit support to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and blaming the Russian attack on Ukraine on NATO enlargement, and the fact that NATO itself has become more concerned about Chinese actions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, the Chinese government has symbolically become very strongly opposed to NATO. Xi Jinping has once again stirred up anger over the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
I’ve felt very frustrated by this. In the year or two after it happened, the explanation based on the investigation that we presented to the Chinese government was on the website of the American Embassy in Beijing, both in English and Chinese. But after a few years, they just took it down. If you now search on Google for the bombing, you won’t find that explanation, and you will find several European newspapers that took a more conspiratorial view, about, “Oh, there must have been some figures in the U.S. government who were trying to undercut improvement of U.S.-China relations with this embassy bombing.”
The other thing they say, of course, is that this was not collateral damage, that we had targeted this building. And they say, “Oh, the Chinese were helping the Serbian government by gathering intelligence.”
All I can tell you is, I talked to our intelligence people. They said, “Yes, the Chinese embassy was used to gather intelligence. They monitor signal intelligence.” But they believed that the Chinese government was not actively assisting the Serbian government. They were using the intelligence for their own purposes. But in China, people assumed the Chinese government wasn’t telling them but that the Chinese government was assisting the Serbians to resist NATO.
I am 100 percent personally sure this not purposeful. It was accidental.
The problem was that the Chinese government and people had huge respect for American competence, and they believed that it was impossible for us to make a mistake like this. They have respect for our internal management of our own policy, policy implementation, and our military. So they thought, “Oh, it can’t possibly be an accident.”
When I put together the explanation with my colleagues, I wanted to add an appendix of some of the other terrible mistakes we’ve made because I thought it would make the explanation more credible. They wouldn’t let me do that. They thought that was too humiliating.
What was the conclusion? How did the bombing of the Chinese embassy happen?
NATO was bombing targets in the Kosovo War, especially in Belgrade, and they were running out of military targets. The call went out, “We’re looking for more targets.” Over in the CIA, there was a contractor who worked on non-proliferation. He was aware that there was a depot that the Serbians were using to sell missile parts and devices to other countries — but not China.
This contractor submitted this arms depot as a potential NATO target. He identified the location of it in a crude manner. He had the address, then looked at parallel streets and tried to figure out which building was this arms depot. Then, he runs it through an out-of-date database with a lot of locational data.
The Belgrade embassy bombing increased China’s sense of vulnerability.
The military practice is to run things through three databases to ensure we don’t make targeting errors and strike a hospital, a school, or something by mistake. But I’m quite sure, in talking to the CIA and the military people, that these databases are not actually independently created. The mistakes in one database get repeated in the others. The Chinese Embassy had moved, and they didn’t obtain up-to-date information about where the Chinese Embassy was.
That basically was the mistake. They did strike a building, the Chinese Embassy, that had a lot of intelligence-gathering stuff. There were quite a few injuries. The building was destroyed, and three journalists were killed. Of course, in China, these state journalists are not 100 percent private journalists at all; they’re conducting collection of intelligence for the government and for the news media.
We told the story just like that in the explanation. And, by the way, just in the last few weeks, I have managed to get the U.S. Embassy to put this on the website in Chinese and English. Hopefully, it will stay there forever.
In recent weeks, Xi Jinping brought it up again during his visit to Serbia.
He visited Serbia and said something about how there are “blood ties” between the Serbian people and the Chinese because they’re both victims of American aggression.
And that legacy, that political messaging, is probably here to stay.
After it happened, it was very difficult. The Chinese cut off all diplomatic contacts with the United States for about six months. This was the period when we were trying to get back to finally conclude the WTO agreement. The only channel that they continued, which I found interesting, was discussions about North Korean nuclear issues. Otherwise, they cut off all diplomatic communication.
And at the same time, the military threat of China became an issue for America, especially regarding arms sales.
The research of my colleague, Tai Ming Cheung, who studies the Chinese military and dual-use technologies, indicates that the Belgrade embassy bombing was a real turning point in China’s military modernisation program. I thought it was the Taiwan Strait crisis, but his interviews with people in the military indicate that the Belgrade embassy bombing increased China’s sense of vulnerability. And the military hyped that to get more resources and bigger budgets.
The 1992 Consensus used to be Taiwan’s position, now it’s China’s
What was your approach to Taiwan as Deputy Assistant Secretary?
We took the risks of military conflict in Taiwan very seriously. Our inability to control what Taiwanese politicians say and do is a major challenge because they can be very provocative to Beijing.
We continually tried to reassure Beijing that “this isn’t us; it’s them.” And Bill Clinton, when he visited China in 1998, articulated the “Three No’s” at a library in Shanghai. That was all planned and managed and part of the negotiation, and it wasn’t anything new. Madeleine Albright had already said it when she visited China. And even going back to Kissinger — he said it. Our view about saying things related to Taiwan was that if we’ve said it before and they want us to say it, and we want them to do things — like commit to de-targeting our nuclear missiles toward one another, other deliverables — we’ll do it.
Taiwan has an elected president, and this president has to maintain certain authority and respect.
However, tensions over Taiwan were almost constant. During the time I was in government, the whole “1992 Consensus” — “there’s one China, but the definition varies between Beijing and Taipei” — was a compromise position that Taipei endorsed, and the “one China” principle was Beijing’s position. They didn’t accept the ‘92 Consensus. Look at today — the situation has flipped. Now, the ‘92 Consensus is the Beijing position.
I have always felt that all of these what I call “magic words” about declaratory policy on Taiwan are purely symbolic, and that both sides would be better off ignoring this kind of declaratory policy. Xi Jinping has gotten himself boxed in by the “magic words” now. It’s most unfortunate. It would be so much better to restore high-level dialogue with no preconditions, no “magic words” preconditions. Because Taiwan has an elected president, and this president has to maintain certain authority and respect.
They have domestic politics too.
Exactly. They cannot utter the words exactly upon the command of Beijing. If they do, they look like they have no authority.
But that’s what Xi Jinping wants.
Yeah, but it’s so stupid. It doesn’t get you anything. So that’s why I remain in favour of high-level dialogue with no preconditions.
What was the position of Taiwan in the greater context of U.S.-China relations? Why did the U.S. care about Taiwan, given its ever-closer ties with China?
We cared about Taiwan more as Taiwan became a vibrant democracy. But it became less amenable to our influence and control. So that was really a challenge. We have this friendly relationship with Taiwan that we just can’t walk away from. We can’t allow Beijing to absorb Taiwan, we have a legal commitment to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act.
U.S. and China have managed this knotty set of problems pretty well over the years. In a way, you could view maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait as one of the greatest achievements of U.S.-China diplomacy. Hopefully, we’ll continue to do that, just with no major changes in the status quo.
Falun Gong and U.S.-China relations
Did the Falun Gong demonstrations play any role in the U.S.-China relationship?
The Falun Gong Incident was important in terms of contributing to the insecurity of Jiang Zemin. The Falun Gong organised this massive sit-in around Zhongnanhai in complete secrecy, and there was no warning from the security apparatus to Jiang Zemin. So it really freaked him out. They were required to register as a sect or something like that, and they didn’t want to do that. So they organised.
Falun Gong is a variety of qigong, a Buddhist-related, spiritual, and physical fitness movement based on breathing exercises. At the time, it had gotten quite popular in China, especially with the elite, including party members, intellectuals, and businesspeople. The guru and head of Falun Gong lived in the United States, but the U.S. government had no contact with him. There was no effort to use Falun Gong to disrupt China. This was not an externally driven thing.
Jiang Zemin was shaken by the demonstration. According to reports that appear to have come from Zhu Rongji, he said at the time, “Just talk with them. Negotiate an end to this demonstration.” But Jiang Zemin instead launched a massive government effort to destroy Falun Gong, crack down on it, ban it, and set up a special office in the centre. Basically, this anti-Falun Gong movement continues. It’s obviously not a serious threat in China, but it contributed to the paranoid mindset of Jiang Zemin.
Did it impact your work as Deputy Assistant Secretary?
It did. For one thing, I had to learn about it. I remember we had a workshop at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research to explain more of it to us. And it happened after we failed to sign the WTO deal when Zhu Rongji came. Next, we had this Falun Gong demonstration sit-in around Zhongnanhai, and then the Belgrade embassy bombing. So all of these things are basically human agency, accidental, unpredictable events, which had a major impact on U.S.-China relations. I think about them often because it contributes to my belief that this kind of stuff happens and could happen again in the future.
“Russia scholars hate Russia, and China scholars love China.” That’s no longer the case.
How did you keep up-to-date about China while in office, and how did you interact with the intelligence side of the U.S. government?
The intelligence side is great because they’re like colleagues who were China watchers. But I have to tell you, I had anticipated that one of the good things about going into government was that I was going to have access to all of these classified sources. I’m finally going to get inside the black box and really understand China.
It was so disappointing. They know not much more than what we know outside government.
Do you think they just don’t have the sources in China?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s gotten better, but I don’t think so. Because when I talk to colleagues in government about internal elite politics, they’re always asking me, “What do you think?” It’s not just that it’s classified material. They feel like they don’t know that much.
As a scholar and former official, how would you evaluate the impact of China scholars on U.S.-China policy?
I think it’s pretty significant. Going way back to the Cold War, many of these folks had good access and relationships with people in government. I wouldn’t exaggerate it, but it does have some influence.
Looking at today, when there’s such a souring of attitudes towards Xi Jinping’s China, the China scholarly community is now strongly critical of China. It’s much more like it was during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. We used to joke that “Russia scholars hate Russia, and China scholars love China.” But that’s no longer the case. They may still love China as a society, but they’re much more critical of the government. And big business is much more critical, too. You cannot find a group in America that is really defending China anymore because its actions are pretty indefensible.
And that’s a huge shift.
Huge.
As you finished your time in the Clinton government, did you want to stay in government after that?
Yes and no. It’s hard on the family, and I needed to get back. UC San Diego was incredibly generous in giving me three years off. Most universities will not give you more than two. If you want to keep your job, you’ve got to go back to the university. But it gets a little addictive knowing the inside of issues and the access to information. That’s the hard part to give up. But I did give up my clearances and everything. So I just walked away, back to the university.
Recommended readings
Susan Shirk, 1993, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, University of California Press
Susan Shirk, 1994, How China Opened Its Door: The Political Success of the PRC's Foreign Trade and Investment Reforms, Brookings Institution Press
Susan Shirk, 2007, Fragile Superpower, Oxford University Press
About us
The Peking Hotel podcast and newsletter are digital publications in which Liu He interviews China specialists about their first-hand experiences and observations from decades past. The project grew out of Liu’s research at Hoover Institution collecting oral history of China experts living in the U.S. Their stories are a reminder of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.
We also have a Chinese-language Substack. We hope to publish more conversations like this one, so stay tuned!
Share this post