China has a long tradition of “scholar-officials” — intelligentsia who received a classical Confucian education and were imbued with the interests of the commonwealth before taking up government positions. And while analogies are always perilous business, I can’t help but think of Prof. Susan Shirk as a scholar-official with American characteristics.
Susan is a research professor at the University of California 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. Her four years of government service overlapped with several defining moments in U.S.-China relations, including Jiang Zemin’s U.S. state visit, negotiations on China joining the WTO, and the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Those years were both the peak of American global power and of U.S.-China engagement.
Susan was also my professor. Her class was the best I attended at Schwarzman College. She maintains an active pursuit of the public interest and combines the experience of an insider with the fresh eyes and independent judgment of an external observer.
For Peking Hotel, I feel fortunate to have sat in her home study for four consecutive afternoons, sharing a dozen hours together, and listening to her reflections on her China journey — and afterwards, discovering San Diego has the best fish tacos I have ever tasted.
This excerpt — edited for brevity and clarity — includes the stories of how she entered government, conducted human rights diplomacy, and negotiated China’s accession to the WTO. A future episode will cover Jiang Zemin’s visit, the Belgrade embassy bombing, and her reflections on U.S.-China relations. Stay tuned.
Hope you enjoy!
Leo
For quick navigation to the specific sections:
State Department vs. National Security Council — Which job to take?
‘You need to figure out your thoughts in the shower’
Three pillars of US-China relations: human rights, nonproliferation, and trade
WTO negotiations, China’s peaceful rise, and the peak of American unipolarity
State Department vs. National Security Council — Which job to take?
As a career academic, how did you first begin working for the State Department?
Around 1991, I became involved in foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and got security clearance to join the Defense Policy Board. In 1992, I started the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) — a track-two security dialogue for Northeast Asia: Russia, China, Japan, the U.S., North Korea, and South Korea.
At that time, because I was head of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, I was on the Defense Policy Board, and my husband, Sam Popkin, was the deputy pollster for Bill Clinton, my name got mentioned in The Washington Post as the only contender for Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia. Wow, that was amazing.
I had never served in government before. I was both intrigued and scared because I thought, “I couldn’t do that. I don’t know how to do that.” So we went to the inaugural of Bill Clinton. While in Washington, they announced that Winston Lord would be the Assistant Secretary. I had a few minutes of disappointment, and then I was very relieved.
But what it meant was, all over Asia, they’d read my name as a possible Assistant Secretary for East Asia. And Winston, who’s the nicest man in the world, treated me with great respect. At the time, I was advocating for more regional multilateral efforts in East Asia as a way of America reassuring our allies and other countries in Asia that we are there to stay. That was the premise of NEACD. The State Department supported it. I went to all these countries, talked to the foreign ministries, got them to come, and had the opportunity to do this track-two project.
Even though we worked for two different countries, we were on the same team.
I got to know Chinese diplomats. The person who came to NEACD in the very earliest days was Fu Ying. She and I were the two women. She was a junior diplomat, very smart. She recognised that, for China, participating in regional multilateral institutions would be a good way to reassure the United States and other countries that even as China grew stronger, its intentions were friendly and benign. So she really got into it. Every night, we would plan what we would do the next day…
You and Fu Ying together?
Together. We informally collaborated. She introduced me to Wang Yi, who was the Director General of the Asia Department at the time. He — also super smart — had a similar perspective, that China needed to find a way to increase its status, its influence in East Asia, but in a way that would not be viewed as threatening to other countries. This was a kind of reassurance policy. I had the opportunity to work with people like that. Even though we worked for two different countries, we were on the same team. I thought this was really good for America. It helped America sustain its presence in Asia, get along pretty well with China, and prevent China from becoming a security threat.
Then [in 1997], in the second Clinton term, I got invited to become the Deputy Assistant Secretary, which I was much more comfortable with becuase my job was all about China, not the whole region.
How did you join Clinton’s second administration?
During ‘95-’96, we had the Taiwan Strait Crisis when we allowed Lee Teng-hui to come to Cornell. He was supposed to give a personal talk to his alma mater, Cornell, but ended up making political remarks, which got Beijing upset. They launched missile tests and exercises to show disapproval and put pressure on Taiwan.
I was on the Defense Policy Board during that crisis. I remember vividly our meeting in the Pentagon the day that the U.S. had to decide on our response to the missile tests, which effectively closed down several ports in Taiwan. Bill Perry, whom I absolutely adored and respected greatly for his wisdom and humanity, was sharing with us his dilemma about how the U.S. should respond. There was a real risk of escalation. I have to say I was uncertain and did not offer any valuable advice. I knew that we had to show resolve, but I didn’t know how much and how to do it. Bill made the call to send not just one but two carrier battle groups to the area around Taiwan. It was a strong show of resolve. He was anxious. Fortunately, it paid off because the Chinese consequently de-escalated. The crisis ended.
China policy is made primarily by the White House, not the State Department.
After that, both sides recognised the risk of another crisis like this one, so they made a major effort to stabilise the relationship. I was brought in from outside the government as a political appointee to provide external expertise. I was lucky because my husband was part of the Clinton team. I was offered positions both in the National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department. I interviewed with both Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright.
I decided to go to the State Department, which shows how little I understood about the policy process. China policy is made primarily by the White House, not the State Department. If I wanted to be in the middle of the action, I should have gone to the NSC.
Sandy Kristoff was the senior director for the Asia Group in the NSC. It was clear to me that she did not want me to come. She thought having an academic come in and do China — and she was not a China person — was just going to make her life difficult. I said, tell me, “What does the China person actually do here?” At the time, Bob Suettinger was their China person. She said, “Oh, right now, Bob is writing a little memo on translating this phrase from Chinese to help people understand it.” He was doing something that sounded so mundane and not the least bit interesting. And obviously, in retrospect, she told me that to discourage me from coming there.
Sandy Berger was very nice. My position on Taiwan arms sales was that we should be generous with military support to Taiwan. We wanted to deter future aggression by the mainland and to reduce the risk that the U.S. would have to send our military forces. He seemed to find that point of view compatible, so I was offered the job.
I was advised that there’s no limit to what you can accomplish in government if you don’t care about claiming credit.
But I decided to take the State Department job instead. For one thing, Madeleine Albright had been an academic. She studied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I felt she had a great sense of humour and a great strategic sense. I felt comfortable with her. I thought that if I went to the State Department, I would have a chance to actually travel to China and negotiate with the Chinese side, whereas the NSC would pretty much stay in Washington.
‘You need to figure out your thoughts in the shower’
Do you still remember your first day in government, when you entered the State Department?
I was worried because academics never have a boss. I never worked in a hierarchy. I thought, “Oh, how am I going to handle this?”
Stanley Roth was the Assistant Secretary. He was great. He had been a congressional staffer, and was not a China person. His way of dealing with me as a political appointee was, “You do China, I’ll do the rest of Asia.” He elevated me to meetings that normally the Deputy Assistant Secretary didn’t go to.
I was advised that there’s no limit to what you can accomplish in government if you don’t care about claiming credit, which actually fits my personality well. If I felt something needed to get done, I would communicate with one of the undersecretaries of a State Department division and give them the idea. “Why don’t you convene a meeting on this?” Often, they were happy to receive such initiatives. They were two levels higher than I was and would call the meeting. I did that, for example, about discussions with China on national missile defence and similarly with climate change. If you pursue your initiatives through higher-level people, often you can get things done. I learned gradually how to be effective.
One of the most challenging parts of being in government was the relationship between the State Department, the National Security Council and the Pentagon. Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger communicated very well with one another. And my buddy Jeff Bader was over at the NSC, who had been in my position in the State Department and then moved over to the NSC. Kurt Campbell was my counterpart in the Defense Department, in the Pentagon. He and I got along great. No problem. We travelled a lot. Of course, he’d been my student at UC San Diego. Even though he was an exceptional student, he became a Marshall Scholar and went to Oxford — I had no memory of him, which we often joked about.
Despite all that, the White House and the National Security Council hoarded information and marginalised the State Department people. They did not share with us in the State Department and treated the State Department, the East Asia Bureau, the China Desk, and the Taiwan Desk as if we were their staff. Very frustrating. And you didn’t want to complain to your bosses because they’re so busy. You wanted to be a low-maintenance person.
And give them good news.
Not necessarily good news, but not give them problems.
Jeff Bader told me, “Okay, once you enter the State Department at 7:30 or 8 a.m., you have no time to think. You’re busy non-stop with meetings and stuff. If you have a policy issue, if something’s going on, you need to figure out what should be done about it while in the shower, even before you get dressed.”
What was your typical day like?
When you come in, the first thing you’ve got to deal with is press guidance. The spokesperson has to brief the press at 10 am. And then it’s just one meeting after another. Once a week, I would have lunch with the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese embassy. It actually was Liu Xiaoming.
The later ambassador to the U.K.
I spent a lot of time talking to the diplomats at the Chinese embassy. There was a fellow political counsellor, He Yafei, who got in trouble later on with Yang Jiechi and was sidelined. But he was a gifted, smart, flexible guy.
And then to interagency meetings of various sorts on different subjects. At the China desk, my job was supposed to be responsible for all dimensions of relations with China. So I also talked to people in different agencies — agriculture, treasury, commerce. My job was to advise and coordinate with all of those folks. And of course, when we had Chinese visitors, then I would be part of that.
What level?
Senior people, like Xiao Yang, the head of the Supreme Judicial Court and the Minister of Justice. He was so impressive. There was another person who’s in jail now, or maybe he already died in jail. And I would usually be part of every meeting with the Chinese involving the President or the Secretary of State.
Three pillars of US-China relations: human rights, nonproliferation, and trade
What did you initially want to accomplish in government?
I wanted to improve relations between the U.S. and China and get China to change its foreign policy behaviour more in line with the global order. The three main areas were nonproliferation, human rights, and trade.
We put a tremendous amount of effort into nonproliferation because China was selling nuclear and missile technology to all these other countries — very dangerous. We were successful. The Chinese government came to realise the benefits of cleaning up its act. They didn’t really have an interest in all these other countries having weapons of mass destruction.
Improvement in human rights in China has to come from internal demand.
On human rights, we set the bar pretty low. I remember that, before I came into government, Jeff Bader and Bob Suettinger had been to Beijing with Warren Christopher when he was Secretary of State to try to resume high-level exchange of visits between our leaders, and we wanted to condition it on improvement in human rights. So we asked for the release of a few dissidents. We asked for access for the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Chinese prisons. And one other thing — things that we thought would be easy for China to say yes to.
It’s not like you were asking for the abolition of forced labor camps.
Yeah. Still, they said no. My experience with human rights is that, by and large, nothing we did really worked.
The one area that I felt was promising was the promotion of rule of law in China, because there was a big push inside China by people like Xiao Yang to increase the autonomy of the legal system and strengthen the rule of law. We initiated this rule of law cooperation. We could never get Congress to appropriate money for it because Nancy Pelosi — who was head of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the State Department — was so hard on China. She just vetoed it every time. So we never got the money that we promised the Chinese. It was infuriating to me. Still, there was substantial progress at the time.
And that was a cooperative undertaking because there really was a demand for it in China. So what I learned from all of that experience was that improvement in human rights in China has to come from internal demand. Externally, we can shame them, criticise them, make ourselves feel good that we’re articulating our values, and play to our domestic constituencies in the United States. But in the end, have we really achieved anything in China? Most of the time: no. I came away from my experience in government very discouraged about that effort.
I don’t think the goal of U.S. policy should be to slow down China’s growth and development.
On the other hand, we did manage to make progress on trade because, again, there was internal demand in China to join the World Trade Organization, to open up to foreign trade and investment. It’s true that Clinton and everybody else in the administration oversold the benefit of China’s accession to WTO — the political transformation of China that might occur as a result of the market reforms and opening through WTO. Everyone expected that political reform in China was occurring. It was happening, though very slowly, and we were by no means confident that China was going to “democratise.” But we were encouraged by what we saw.
I remember very well with Clinton’s big state visit to China that the thing that got President Clinton, the First Lady, and Madeleine Albright the most excited was when they allowed the press conference between Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton to be televised nationally in China. They talked about Tibet, the Dalai Lama — it was amazing. They also allowed live broadcasts of President Clinton’s speech at Peking University.
It was a little “hundred flowers blooming and contending” period in China. What it meant to us working on China policy was that our policy reinforced the positive changes underway in China. We didn’t think we were making it happen by our policy, but we felt good that our policy was facilitating this progress.
WTO negotiations, China’s peaceful rise, and the peak of American unipolarity
You spent your academic life unboxing the black box of Chinese politics. Can you help us unbox the American side on China policy? Clinton went into his first term being quite hard on China. He wanted to link trade to human rights and professed that “From Beijing to Baghdad, all dictators must fall.” And yet, when he exited his administration, China had become a strategic partner. How did the shift in the strategy happen, and how did it look on the inside?
When Bill Clinton was running for his first term, I was a little involved in the foreign policy side of the campaign, which is always just a sideshow — not very important. I remember Richard Bush and I wrote a memo to the campaign urging that we end this congressional circus every year on “Most Favoured Nation” so that the White House would make the decision and then it would be up to Congress to veto it if they wanted to, but that they would not have to debate it every year.
But it was actually, looking back on it, a stupid idea because it meant the President had to take the whole political responsibility on himself. But they did it. Once he had that responsibility, he realised that every year, he would get beat up over the policy. So Clinton just said, “Let’s just end it. No more annual review of MFN.” Because he said — this is what I’ve heard — “Look at Cuba, all the years that we tried to get Cuba to improve their human rights situation. They’re right here off the coast of Florida. China’s over there, the other side of the world. How are we going to get China to change its human rights practices? This is never going to work.”
The only way to stop Congress from doing it was the WTO route. We stopped calling it Most Favoured Nation because it sounds like we’re doing them a favour and just called it “normal” trade status for China. To do that, we had to get China into the WTO and then get Congress to agree. That was tough, because organised labour was completely opposed, and many Republicans were opposed too. It was a major effort. There were a few big American companies that bankrolled the lobbying.
Which ones?
Boeing, the insurance companies... Big international businesses lobbied strongly to get China normal trading status through Congress. President Clinton had to promise members of Congress all sorts of side payments. It’s like any trade agreement — very difficult. He promised them a bridge in this district, a tunnel in that district. It took a tremendous effort. But we succeeded.
What role did the State Department play in the WTO negotiations?
The trade representative leads the effort, but there is an interagency process behind it. So there’s always a State Department person and a National Security Council person. I was certainly following it closely.
When it was accomplished by Charlene Barshefsky, we hoped to have Zhu Rongji finalise it when he visited the United States. I went to accompany Zhu Rongji on that visit to the United States. I was the U.S. government representative. Then I hear, much to my amazement, that there was a cabinet meeting the day before Zhu Rongji and I were due to arrive in Washington, and that the President decided not to sign the deal.
I was totally shocked and furious and upset. The domestic political advisors to President Clinton had said, “You can’t sign the WTO deal with Premier Zhu Rongji. If you sign the agreement when he comes, Congress and the public will assume that you rushed to do it in time for him to come, and that you gave away too much and made too many compromises. So what you have to do is wait a few weeks, a month, and then sign the deal.”
Clinton said, “Okay.” Meanwhile, the foreign policy people, Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, are saying, “If you don’t do the deal now, it may disappear. Because they have domestic politics too.” The night Zhu Rongji arrives, he has an informal dinner at the White House with President Clinton. President Clinton informs him that they’re going to have to put it off a little bit to finalise the deal. This was going to be the achievement of Zhu Rongji’s visit. Jiang Zemin had backed him up on this. Zhu Rongji didn’t try to talk him into it. He just said, “Really? If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.” And then I traveled around the country with Zhu Rongji.
Zhu Rongji must not have been a happy man.
So embarrassing. Speaking on the stage, he told the audience, “I was really disappointed that we weren’t able to conclude the agreement.” He did it in a dignified way. President Clinton realised almost immediately that this was a huge mistake. And so we tried to get the deal back on track. We arranged for President Clinton to call Zhu Rongji when he was in New York and say, “Let’s finish it off right now.” I was in the room, handing him the phone. Zhu Rongji said, “I’m sorry, President Clinton, but I can’t do that. I’m about to go to Canada. I’m negotiating with the Canadians. How would they feel if I’m finishing up the U.S. deal while I’m in Canada? I can’t do that. It’s impossible.”
I was on the Chinese plane with all the Chinese officials — Long Yongtu, the chief negotiator, Wang Huning, all these people. And what was interesting to me — they’re reading the Hong Kong media to get a sense of what the public reaction is in China. In other words, their media doesn’t tell them.
We had to get things back on track. Charlene said, “We weren’t going to publicise the deal, but we now decided to put it out so people can see how good it is.” So we put it out. And then, when people in China saw that Zhu Rongji had kind of sold them out, there were complaints about it giving away too much. Shortly after that visit, we had the Falun Gong surrounding Zhongnanhai and the Belgrade embassy accidental bombing. So getting the WTO negotiation back on track was really hard. But we finally did it.
On that last negotiation, I went with Charlene, and so did Ken Lieberthal and Gene Sperling. The Chinese side tried to claw back concessions. Charlene had a hard job because she couldn’t just give up everything. For everything she gave up, she tried to get something new so that the deal might be slightly different but just as good.
The time you actually get stuff done is when you’re actually willing to walk away.
The Chinese side — the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC) people — they treated our delegation so rudely, so abusively. One night, they just left us in MOFTEC without any information about where we were or what would happen next. We were almost locked into the ministry.
Gene Sperling, who’d been one of the domestic political advisors in the first go-round and advised against signing the deal, had been told by President Clinton, “You get this deal done. Do not come back without a deal.” Because President Clinton felt he’d made a big mistake, and he had to make it right.
Meanwhile, Ken Lieberthal and I, the China people, were alarmed at how abusively the Chinese side was treating our delegation. So we said, “You know what? We need to leave. Because if they treat us this way on this occasion, they will feel they can do it in the future. So we can’t tolerate this.” It’s like a role reversal. So we threatened to leave. The time you actually get stuff done is when you’re actually willing to walk away. Gene Sperling was saying, “No, you can’t! You can’t walk away.” But we said, “We’ve got to walk away.” And Charlene agreed. We were getting ready to leave, and then they called us back. And in the end, we got the deal done, thanks, again, to Zhu Rongji.
That’s an amazing story.
It was hairy, really hairy. Once it was done, we felt quite good. It was a fabulous deal, even though, obviously, it couldn’t be a complete market opening, but for what it was, it was amazing.
Do you have regrets about the WTO deal? Because I think some today would attribute China’s threats to America, to the global order today, to the fact that they joined the WTO and grew their economy.
Absolutely not. I completely disagree with that. We opened up many more economic opportunities for the United States than for China. China already had access to our market. We helped China attract more foreign investment. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I don’t think the goal of U.S. policy, then or now, should be to slow down China’s growth and development. The goal should be to induce China to behave responsibly. I’m not in favour of a containment policy.
Are there things about the WTO deal that you wish you had done differently?
I don’t think we could have gotten a whole lot more than we got in terms of the actual deal. But it’s interesting that some of the most notable limitations on market access are in the cultural domain. It was pretty obvious to me, sitting through all this, that the Chinese were very leery of Western cultural influence.
By which they probably meant Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BBC, CNN, that kind of stuff.
And limitations on the number of films from Hollywood and things like that.
Do you think negotiators could have pushed harder to get more?
No, we worked hard on it. Maybe it’s because we knew we already had California. This is the way Charlene thinks. She’s got agricultural interests; she thinks about the different states and the members of the Senate and Congress and having to get their approval.
Why did Clinton bother with all this domestic political bargaining for China?
Because President Clinton paid a lot of attention to China policy. He felt a sense of responsibility to bring China into the world in a peaceful way. That would be a good thing for America in terms of reducing security risks. These two major powers could get along — a post–Cold War strategy for America. And, of course, America was at its unipolar peak, so we could be generous in our policy toward China.
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!
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