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发帖数: 3280 | 1 Robin Niblett:
There was a moment there when you must have wondered if this was all going
to be able to hang together. It struck me as one of the most remarkable
moments of your time as secretary of state with China, those few months at
the beginning of 2012 when Wang Lijun – the vice-mayor of Chongqing, Bo
Xilai’s right-hand guy – sort of gave himself up to the US embassy in
Beijing, which you had to handle in a particular way. Then three or four
months later, Chen Guangcheng had to be kind of rescued into the embassy, if
I can put it that way. That was just before you were going to land for your
next Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Can you give us a feel for how you
managed that particular process?
Hillary Rodham Clinton:
It’s always a challenge when things that are totally unexpected happen. I
like to have these virtual inboxes in my head: the immediate screaming
crisis, the brewing crisis and the long-term crisis. Then I also try to keep
a big box of opportunities. But it is a great example of the way I think
the expanded Strategic and Economic Dialogue helped us resolve two very
difficult issues, because what I tried to do in the Dialogue is to really
embed in the governments of both of our countries issues, so that there was
a lot more interchange. I came to believe that the Chinese, for their own
reasons and because of their own way of governing, believed that somewhere
in Washington there is a master plan about what we intend to do to try to
control their rise. I see my friend Kevin Rudd sitting in the front row; he
and I have talked about that endlessly. They really do, because they have
plans and they have all kinds of processes. They have never understood the
jazz-like quality of American government and democracy.
So what I tried to do is to begin to sort of strip away some of the
misconceptions. We do have views, we have interests, we have values – but
we’re not opaque, we want to share with you and we want you to begin to
share a little more with us. So when, as you say, Bo Xilai’s right hand,
the police chief, showed up in a consulate (not the embassy, showed up in a
consulate) asking for asylum because his story, which you know was quite
dramatic, about him knowing that Bo Xilai’s wife had killed one of your
countrymen – he did not fit any of the categories for the United States
giving him asylum. He had a record of corruption, of thuggishness, brutality
. He was an enforcer for Bo Xilai. They may have had a falling-out and now
he was trying to somehow get his way to a place of safety. But on the other
hand, the consulate was quickly encircled by other police who were either
subordinate to Bo Xilai or looking to curry favour. So it was becoming a
very dangerous situation.
So what we did was to tell him that he could not move into the consulate,
that there were no grounds on which we could offer that to him. But he kept
saying that he wanted to get the truth to Beijing, he wanted the government
in Beijing to know what was happening. So we said: we can arrange that. So
indeed that’s what we did. We were very discreet about it and did not try
to embarrass anybody involved in it, but tried to handle it in a very
professional manner, which I think we accomplished.
Fast forward: I get called late, late one night about Chen, who has escaped
from house arrest – quite remarkably, since he’s blind – had broken his
foot in the escape, had been picked up and was seeking asylum in our embassy
in Beijing, and was on his way there. Of course, we knew of his courageous
history of dissident activity. We knew he was a self-taught lawyer who had
very bravely taken on the one-child policy of China, suing local officials
and others for their behaviour. It was, as you say, about a week before our
annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue meeting, this time in Beijing. I was
very well aware that this would be an issue in the relationship, but I also
believed that this was an example of American values in practice. This was a
man who, yes, deserved American support and attention and protection.
So lots of back and forth, as you can imagine, and then I finally just made
the call. I said: we’re going to send our people out to go pick him up. So
there was a rendezvous, we got him into the embassy, got him medical
treatment for some of his injuries. Then had to tell the Chinese government
that we were offering hospitality to one of their citizens and would love to
talk to them about it. Kurt Campbell, who some of you know, who was my
assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs, immediately got on a
plane. We were fortunate that Harold Koh, the head of my legal department
and an incredible international lawyer with his own history of dissidence –
his father was unable to return home from his position at the UN because of
a coup in Korea – he had a feel for this. We tracked him down, he was at
one of our Strategic and Economic Dialogue working groups. So we got our
people to the embassy and they began talking with Mr Chen, and then they
began negotiating with their Chinese counterparts.
This is a long story, I don’t want to take all of our time, but it was a
very touching and touch-and-go situation. We were able to negotiate with the
Chinese safe passage for his family – he hadn’t seen one of his children
for quite some time – to Beijing. We were able to negotiate an agreement
that he could attend college, something he really wanted to do, and he did
not want to leave China. He loves China. He actually also very much believes
that if he could just get his story to the upper echelon of the Chinese
government, they would agree with him, because so much of the mistreatment
he experienced was at the hands of local and regional officials. So our team
did a great job negotiating all of this. He did have medical problems that
needed further treatment so he left our embassy, totally voluntarily. He
called me from the van on the way to the hospital and said: if I were there,
I would kiss you. I said: I’m very happy you’re so happy.
Robin Niblett:
A tactful answer.
Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Yes. We got him to the hospital and his family showed up. Rightfully, they
were saying: are you sure you can trust the Chinese government? Are you sure
that they will keep their end of the bargain? Are you sure they’re going
to let you go to college, are you sure they’re not going to throw you in
prison? He began – and this is a man who had been under a lot of stress now
for several days – he began saying: I’m not sure, I’m not sure. So he
tells us: I don’t think that’s a good deal you negotiated. Yes, I know. I
said: excuse me? I mean, really. So we said: okay, what would you like? He
said: I’d like to go to America. Okay. After saying no, no, no. So we
worked out an arrangement that he could go to New York University to study,
assuming we could get a second agreement with the Chinese. And this is where
I think all the work we put into this, all of the incredible planning and
one-on-one meetings and very candid conversations that I engaged in with my
counterparts and others did with theirs – because I had to go to State
Councillor Dai Bingguo and I had to say: this is in your interests and it’s
in our interests, and there’s got to be a way we can work this out. His
first response was: we never want to talk about this man again with anybody.
We can’t go back into negotiations. I said: we have to, and we need to
start now and we need to get this resolved by the end of our meetings.
We did it in a way that really I think validated the kind of arrangement and
the almost daily work that went into it. The final thing I would say about
it, which was very touching to me – this was really touch-and-go. One of
the things that I was asked to do, because I still had meetings on my agenda
with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, and they said: please don
’t mention this to them, we will try to work this out. So I didn’t, and we
had very formal, very predictable kinds of meetings. Then we were having an
event of our People-to-People Exchanges. Again, I know a lot of foreign
policy experts say that’s like frosting on the cake, what difference does
it make? Put on your formal clothes, go into the meetings. I can only tell
you that at the People-to-People event there was a young American man who
was studying in China and a young Chinese woman who was studying in the
United States, and we had picked them out to speak to the group (she in
English, he in Mandarin) about their experiences in each other’s country. I
am convinced that helped to convince the Chinese government that we would
do this deal, because I said in my prepared remarks: this is what the future
should be about, about young people like this working together,
understanding each other better, visiting and finding common ground. That’s
what we should be looking for.
So later that afternoon we were able to make the deal and then Mr Chen and
his family were able to leave. But I think it was part of a broader story,
not just a one-off.
Robin Niblett:
But I think the story, which is fascinating, is, as you said, an absolute
example of that thickening of relationships – what diplomacy, I suppose, is
about.
Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Right.
Robin Niblett:
Diplomacy is meant to be about actual results – to get to them, you have to
go through such a process of confidence-building.
Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Right. We are such an impatient people these days. This seems like it’s
just like the Weber comment about politics: the dull, slow boring of hard
boards. It seems like it just goes on and on and really, the tenth meeting
and the eighteenth dinner. In a way, I think it’s more important to show up
today than it used to be, because everybody knows you can communicate via
technology without showing up. People would say to me all the time: what are
you travelling all over the place for? Part of it was we had some repair
work to do, to be very blunt, but part of it also was we had some
relationships to build. They are worth investing in because you never know
what might come from them or what you might stop coming from them. Yet I
think in part because of the feeling (I’ll speak for my own country) that
this is like just frosting on the cake, fine if you can do it but not
necessary – and I actually think it’s baked into the cake, so to speak. If
you don’t do it, you will not really understand what is possible in such a
complex, fast-changing world like the one we have.
Robin Niblett:
I think even in the UK at the moment, there has been a rediscovery of the
importance of that human component of diplomacy, alongside something I know
you pushed a lot as well: the social media, the connectivity, the town hall
meetings, etc. If you don’t do some of that hard graft, it becomes
incredibly difficult to deal with the crises which are a core part, as you
said, of your job.
Of course I’ve got a bunch of questions about the Middle East and so on
which I’m not going to tackle right now, because I’ve got a lot of people
here, especially among our members, who have a chance to ask questions. |
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