Bill: FYI, Ambassador Stapleton Roy, one of the primary signatories of the 3 July "open letter" on US policy toward China, wrote a reply to John Pomfret's op-ed response to the letter. Roy's reply, copied here, was included in the Nelson Report on 12 July:
I was disappointed to read John Pomfret's negative comments on the Open Letter regarding US China policy. John is a respected China specialist and journalist, but I had difficulty finding a basis for his comments in the letter itself. I cannot speak for the other signers of the letter, but some of my reactions to John's comments are set forth below.
The letter did not call for a kinder, gentler policy towards China. It called for a strong response to China's recent behavior and firm and effective measures to counter the challenges posed by a range of Chinese troubling actions, such as Beijing's failure to live up to its trade commitments and its more aggressive foreign policy. The issue addressed by the letter is not the firmness but rather the effectiveness and potential consequences of the administration's response to these challenges.
In my near-half century in the State Department, I never encountered the view among policy-makers that we had lost an opportunity by not befriending Mao Zedong in the 1940s. I was in China in 1949 when Mao gave his "lean to one side" speech in 1949, and it was one of the texts that I studied in my endeavors to learn Chinese.
The letter did not place the bulk of the blame on the administration for China's behavior. It was Mr. Pomfret who blamed the Obama administration for emboldening China to reach for more, a questionable assertion since the roots of China's greater assertiveness lay in China's rapid economic growth, boosted by the blow to western prestige resulting from the global financial crisis at the end of the George W. Bush administration.
The letter stated frankly that China's rapid economic and military growth had led Beijing toward a more assertive international role. As a letter on US China policy, it did indeed focus on the administration's response to the troublesome aspects of China's behavior. It argued that aspects of this response were fundamentally counterproductive by giving too little attention to forming a common front with our allies and partners in the region and the world in support of our economic and security objectives with respect to China, undermining the economic interests of all nations, exaggerating China's hegemonic capabilities, risking an open-ended arms race, and by ignoring opportunities to work with China in adapting the international system in ways that will make it more sustainable in a changing world.
Whatever the faults of American China policies in the past, they are not attributable to misunderstandings regarding the nature of power in Marxist-Leninist systems. Nor is the term now usable in its traditional form since the nature of Marxism in China has undergone fundamental change with the abandonment of the class basis for the communist party and of class struggle as the engine of change through Jiang Zemin's concept of the Three Represents and Hu Jintao's focus on promoting a harmonious society.
If there are China specialists who are not aware that the communist party controls power in China and that China has a Leninist political system, I have not met them.
Nor have I met China-watchers with a so-called "romantic" attachment to China. After decades of rubbing shoulders with China watchers in the US government, I have found the vast bulk of them to be professionally objective in their assessments of China, neither exaggerating its virtues nor its faults. If there is a detectable bias, it would be on the critical side, not on the romantic side. Some of my colleagues have had romantic attachments to their ethnic-Chinese spouses, but in my experience, this has not affected their ability to view China objectively.
It is not a tired chestnut that if you adopt a hostile attitude towards a person or a country, you increase the likelihood of a hostile response. Common sense and human experience support this. In foreign affairs, as in human affairs, some relationships become hostile not because of attitudes but because of irreconcilable clashes of interests. Nevertheless, even hostile relationships can be turned around, as happened with the Nixon-Mao breakthrough in the early 1970s, if common interests emerge and leaders have the skill to see the opportunities and expand the cooperative aspects of the bilateral ties. Hostile attitudes make it more difficult to see and exploit such opportunities. It will not serve US interests if we permit the competitive aspects of the US-China relationship to obscure the areas where our respective interests will be served by cooperation. The Open Letter was drafted in this spirit.
The Golden Rule has little traction in diplomacy and has not been a factor in important relationships marked by high degrees of rivalry, such as with the Soviet Union and China. Positive gestures can help sustain cooperative relationships but cannot substitute for interest-based approaches in dealing with rivals.
Mr. Pomfret provided a laundry list of reasons why the United States should be responding more assertively to Chinese behavior in which he mixed together domestic developments in China of which we disapprove along with Chinese actions directly affecting US economic and security interests. The Chinese could provide a comparable list reflecting their viewpoint. All countries proceed from the assumption that their own behavior is fully justified and that the fault lies with the other party. Arguments about moral equivalence are for moralists. Good diplomacy is aimed at advancing national interests, not at assigning blame.
What I would hope all China watchers will do, including Mr. Pomfret, is to look for the most effective ways to manage the challenges posed by China's rise in ways that serve not only US interests but the interests of our friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific region. China's military modernization program must be a major concern for the United States, but Beijing is massively outspending us on the non-military components of its quest for greater regional and global influence. Under these circumstances, neglecting US diplomacy will not serve us well. The Open Letter is aimed at strengthening the diplomatic aspect of our comprehensive national power.
Bill: FYI, Ambassador Stapleton Roy, one of the primary signatories of the 3 July "open letter" on US policy toward China, wrote a reply to John Pomfret's op-ed response to the letter. Roy's reply, copied here, was included in the Nelson Report on 12 July:
I was disappointed to read John Pomfret's negative comments on the Open Letter regarding US China policy. John is a respected China specialist and journalist, but I had difficulty finding a basis for his comments in the letter itself. I cannot speak for the other signers of the letter, but some of my reactions to John's comments are set forth below.
The letter did not call for a kinder, gentler policy towards China. It called for a strong response to China's recent behavior and firm and effective measures to counter the challenges posed by a range of Chinese troubling actions, such as Beijing's failure to live up to its trade commitments and its more aggressive foreign policy. The issue addressed by the letter is not the firmness but rather the effectiveness and potential consequences of the administration's response to these challenges.
In my near-half century in the State Department, I never encountered the view among policy-makers that we had lost an opportunity by not befriending Mao Zedong in the 1940s. I was in China in 1949 when Mao gave his "lean to one side" speech in 1949, and it was one of the texts that I studied in my endeavors to learn Chinese.
The letter did not place the bulk of the blame on the administration for China's behavior. It was Mr. Pomfret who blamed the Obama administration for emboldening China to reach for more, a questionable assertion since the roots of China's greater assertiveness lay in China's rapid economic growth, boosted by the blow to western prestige resulting from the global financial crisis at the end of the George W. Bush administration.
The letter stated frankly that China's rapid economic and military growth had led Beijing toward a more assertive international role. As a letter on US China policy, it did indeed focus on the administration's response to the troublesome aspects of China's behavior. It argued that aspects of this response were fundamentally counterproductive by giving too little attention to forming a common front with our allies and partners in the region and the world in support of our economic and security objectives with respect to China, undermining the economic interests of all nations, exaggerating China's hegemonic capabilities, risking an open-ended arms race, and by ignoring opportunities to work with China in adapting the international system in ways that will make it more sustainable in a changing world.
Whatever the faults of American China policies in the past, they are not attributable to misunderstandings regarding the nature of power in Marxist-Leninist systems. Nor is the term now usable in its traditional form since the nature of Marxism in China has undergone fundamental change with the abandonment of the class basis for the communist party and of class struggle as the engine of change through Jiang Zemin's concept of the Three Represents and Hu Jintao's focus on promoting a harmonious society.
If there are China specialists who are not aware that the communist party controls power in China and that China has a Leninist political system, I have not met them.
Nor have I met China-watchers with a so-called "romantic" attachment to China. After decades of rubbing shoulders with China watchers in the US government, I have found the vast bulk of them to be professionally objective in their assessments of China, neither exaggerating its virtues nor its faults. If there is a detectable bias, it would be on the critical side, not on the romantic side. Some of my colleagues have had romantic attachments to their ethnic-Chinese spouses, but in my experience, this has not affected their ability to view China objectively.
It is not a tired chestnut that if you adopt a hostile attitude towards a person or a country, you increase the likelihood of a hostile response. Common sense and human experience support this. In foreign affairs, as in human affairs, some relationships become hostile not because of attitudes but because of irreconcilable clashes of interests. Nevertheless, even hostile relationships can be turned around, as happened with the Nixon-Mao breakthrough in the early 1970s, if common interests emerge and leaders have the skill to see the opportunities and expand the cooperative aspects of the bilateral ties. Hostile attitudes make it more difficult to see and exploit such opportunities. It will not serve US interests if we permit the competitive aspects of the US-China relationship to obscure the areas where our respective interests will be served by cooperation. The Open Letter was drafted in this spirit.
The Golden Rule has little traction in diplomacy and has not been a factor in important relationships marked by high degrees of rivalry, such as with the Soviet Union and China. Positive gestures can help sustain cooperative relationships but cannot substitute for interest-based approaches in dealing with rivals.
Mr. Pomfret provided a laundry list of reasons why the United States should be responding more assertively to Chinese behavior in which he mixed together domestic developments in China of which we disapprove along with Chinese actions directly affecting US economic and security interests. The Chinese could provide a comparable list reflecting their viewpoint. All countries proceed from the assumption that their own behavior is fully justified and that the fault lies with the other party. Arguments about moral equivalence are for moralists. Good diplomacy is aimed at advancing national interests, not at assigning blame.
What I would hope all China watchers will do, including Mr. Pomfret, is to look for the most effective ways to manage the challenges posed by China's rise in ways that serve not only US interests but the interests of our friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific region. China's military modernization program must be a major concern for the United States, but Beijing is massively outspending us on the non-military components of its quest for greater regional and global influence. Under these circumstances, neglecting US diplomacy will not serve us well. The Open Letter is aimed at strengthening the diplomatic aspect of our comprehensive national power.