China's Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance
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China's Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance
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| ISBN-13: | 9780817922863 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hoover Institution Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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CHAPTER 1
Congress
During past presidential administrations, the US Congress has generally served as a brake on executive initiatives to "engage" China at the expense of other US interests that members have historically valued, such as maintaining good relations with Taiwan, interacting with the Tibetan government in exile, and expressing support for human rights. When President Donald Trump assumed office in 2017 and actively began courting Chinese President Xi Jinping, first at Mar-a-Lago and then at the Beijing summit, Congress took a wait-and-see posture. But as his own ardor for a partnership with Xi cooled and his administration became disenchanted with the idea of finding an easy new "engagement" policy, momentum began to shift. Soon Congress was working toward one of the most significant reevaluations of US policy toward China since the start of normalization fifty years ago. And with the White House increasingly skeptical about the prospects of winning President Xi's cooperation, a series of new initiatives began issuing forth from both the administration and Congress, suggesting a rapidly changing landscape for US-China relations.
What was telling was that this tidal shift now emanated not from Congress alone — where it had strong bipartisan support — but also from the White House and National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Office of the US Trade Representative, the Department of the Treasury, and even the Department of State. As sentiment shifted away from hopes of finding common ways to collaborate, a spate of new US policy initiatives began appearing that suggested a sea change. Congress passed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which sought to bolster US defenses against both Chinese military threats and China's influence-seeking operations inside the United States. Congress also passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018, which empowered CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) to expand its oversight of foreign direct investment from China. At the same time, members of Congress also began expressing ever more strenuous opposition to Chinese nonreciprocal practices in trade and investment, such as putting whole sectors of the Chinese economy out-of-bounds to American investors; using Chinese companies to buy into sensitive high-tech areas of the US economy through mergers and acquisitions; and making the transfer of American advanced technology to Chinese partners the price of American companies being given access to Chinese markets. Congressional concern rose over Beijing's continued expansion into and militarization of the South China Sea; the predatory lending practices that can be involved in President Xi Jinping's signature Belt and Road Initiative; and Beijing's continued persecution of Taiwan and opposition to US support for the island.
This chapter reviews highlights of the Chinese government's efforts to influence the US Congress since the start of the normalization process in 1972. As suggested above, because it has viewed such "engagement" as too often taking place at the expense of more important interests, Congress has usually been more wary than the White House of allowing hopes for more positive US-China relations to determine our policy. At times, such as during the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 and in reaction to the Chinese crackdown around Tiananmen Square in 1989, Congress has actively resisted the White House and sought to turn American policy in directions both the Chinese leadership and the US administration have opposed. However, often Congress has played a somewhat passive role, especially in recent years. Still, the control it formally exercises over US government budget outlays, legislation, and the approval of appointments of senior administration officials makes Congress not only important in the formation of US-China policy but also a prime target for Chinese influence efforts.
The review that follows provides historical background to the contemporary US concerns about Chinese government efforts to influence American leaders and public opinion. The record over the past four decades shows some success in Chinese efforts to win influence over congressional opinion. However, more often than not, whatever positive results they have won have not lasted in the face of enduring differences between the two countries.
Congressional Visits to China, 1972–1977
President Nixon's second term featured the Watergate scandal, which forced his resignation in 1974 and resulted in a lull in high-level communication with China. This circumstance gave more prominence to the reports issued by the approximately eighty members of Congress who traveled to China in the period between President Nixon's visit in 1972 and the start of the Carter administration in January 1977. The visits of these congressional delegations — including (repeatedly) top leaders from both parties — were by far the most active channel of high-level communications between the United States and the PRC during this time. And most of the members who went to China wrote reports that were published as official documents. At the time, these congressional reports, as well as the media's coverage of their visits, became important vehicles through which American congressional leaders voiced their views and opinions on domestic Chinese politics and on Sino-American relations, both of which were having an increasingly important impact on American interests in Asia and the world.
By and large, these American visitors were pleased by the post-1972 developments in US-China relations, seeing them as likely to be both a source of strategic leverage against the Soviet Union and a stabilizing influence in Asian affairs. The government in Beijing was seen as preoccupied with domestic affairs, no longer opposed to the presence of American forces in East Asia, and anxious to work with the United States and other noncommunist countries to offset Soviet pressure against China. The Americans saw the Taiwan question as the main impediment to improved bilateral relations, but they differed on how the United States should deal with the problem. Although most members of Congress accepted the Ford administration's cautious approach to China as wise, many were circumspect about the merits of China's political, economic, social, and value systems, then experiencing the last turmoil of the Cultural Revolution and the decline and death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
These congressional visits to China seemed to help the Chinese government improve its standing with Congress and favorably influence American public opinion. The resulting reports show how granting these delegations access to China's leaders and elements of Chinese society that Beijing wished to highlight proved an effective strategy of calming tensions. And the costs for Beijing were limited to modest in-country expenses, since the members usually traveled as official congressional delegations on US government aircraft.
One notable feature of this historical episode was the remarkable role played by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT). Senator Mansfield was widely consulted in Washington as an Asian affairs expert, meaning his observations arguably had more influence than those of other members. He visited China three times during this period, publishing separate reports with detailed assessments of various issues of concern to Americans at the time. In the main, his reports conveyed information and opinions that conformed with Chinese interests. The convergence with Chinese interests was not surprising given the senator's long-standing determination to develop constructive US relations with China going back to his service in China as a marine in the 1920s and during World War II, and reinforced by his strong opposition to the US war in Vietnam. The details in the reports offering strongly positive views of developments in Maoist China meshed well with the recollections of Mansfield's senior aide and secretary of the Senate, Frank Valeo, an Asian affairs specialist, who also recounted the senator's repeated private efforts to make contact with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai to enable Mansfield's visiting China in the period prior to Henry Kissinger's breakthrough in a secret visit to China in July 1971.
Unlike many other members favoring a more cautious pace of normalization with China and sustained ties with Taiwan, Senator Mansfield urged the United States to promptly end ties with Taiwan and accept Beijing's conditions for normal diplomatic relations, warning that to do otherwise would lead to dangerous friction in Sino-American relations and instability in Asia. Senator Mansfield portrayed China as a power with fundamentally peaceful motives in international affairs and placed much of the blame on the United States for past Sino-American conflicts in Asia. He also contradicted those members who worried that China's leadership change could lead to internal struggles affecting China's international and domestic policies. He insisted that such skepticism was unwarranted, because what he called the Maoist system had been effectively inculcated among the Chinese people. Some members complained that the limited itinerary for congressional visits that was furnished by the Chinese hosts did not provide a basis for any meaningful assessment of conditions there. Despite the fact that many congressional visitors questioned how durable China's Maoist regime was and how lasting China's cooperation with the United States would actually prove to be, Mansfield countered that he had had enough opportunity during his three visits to the PRC to move about and obtain enough information through on-the-spot observation and talks with PRC leaders to conclude that it was no passing phenomenon. So, while many members thought the PRC's system of indoctrination and control to be repressive politically, economically, and socially — an affront to the human rights and dignity of its people — voices like Mansfield's served to mute the criticism, maintaining that the country's political, economic, and social system was uniquely well suited to the Chinese people.
Influence Efforts after Establishing Official Relations, 1979–1988
As the Carter administration began moving toward full diplomatic recognition of the PRC, it withheld many of the details about its plans from Congress. One of the largest unresolved issues was the fate of Taiwan, in which Congress took a special interest. The United States had already dropped recognition of Taiwan at the United Nations, and now many in Congress worried that the United States would move to completely abandon the island. In response, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979, which underlined the importance of the United States keeping an ongoing relationship with Taiwan and continuing to provide weapons for its defense.
After formal diplomatic relations were reestablished, China responded in the 1980s by expanding the size and capacity of its Washington embassy staff dedicated to dealing with Congress. Chinese officials lobbying Congress viewed with dismay the rise of pro-Taiwan independence groups among Taiwanese Americans, such as the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, which demonstrated an ability to promote their agenda despite the fact that the United States had broken ties with Taiwan. Beijing would go on to borrow a page from the Nationalist government's playbook by beefing up a diplomatic arm capable of building closer relations with important congressional members and staffers. Since then, the Chinese government has welcomed numerous US delegations composed of both congressional members and staffers. The main host in China for such delegations has been the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA). Founded in December 1949, this organization focuses on international issues and foreign policy research and on conducting international exchanges of officials and expanding people-to-people diplomatic activities. This institute also works to establish contacts with foreign political activists, diplomats, and other distinguished individuals while organizing public lectures and symposia on academic subjects and international policy affairs.
CPIFA is a so-called united front organization, similar to those found in the former Soviet Union and other Leninist states that seek to opportunistically build alliances wherever they can. Such organizations, or GONGOs ("government-organized nongovernmental organizations"), carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government. CPIFA's experience in dealing with foreign visitors is broad. Between 1972 and 2002, it hosted more than four thousand leading Americans in China. Being well connected with the Chinese government's State Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is positioned to organize meetings with high-level officials when the party deems it in its interest to do so. The funding arrangements for congressional staff delegations visiting China usually provide for their travel to be paid by the US side, so as to avoid falling victim to ethics committees and overseers or violating rules regarding conflicts of interest and foreign lobbying. CPIFA often assumed in-country expenses.
The staff delegation trips to China were welcomed and sought after by congressional staff and congressional support agency personnel, mainly from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, which had a growing interest in China and the issues it posed for US policy. The trips generally came twice per year and involved meetings with Chinese government officials and others responsible for key foreign affairs and domestic issues of interest to Congress. The exchanges in these meetings were generally cordial and substantive, although the trips also included sightseeing and visits to parts of China of interest.
In the United States, there have been a number of counterpart groups that have facilitated congressional exchanges. Among them are the Washington, DC–based US-Asia Institute (USAI), which has played a leading role in managing the congressional staff delegations side since 1985. The National Committee on US-China Relations undertook a pilot congressional staff delegation visit to China in 1976 and resumed involvement with such exchanges again during the past decade. In the 1980s, the Asia-Pacific Exchange Foundation (also known as the Far East Studies Institute) also managed a number of congressional staff delegations to China, while the US-Asia Institute has, since 1985, coordinated over 120 such delegations and exchanges to China. These visits have been carried out in cooperation with the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA) and the Better Hong Kong Foundation (BHKF). But the National People's Congress (NPC) has perhaps hosted the most trips, taking more than a thousand congressional staff members to China. Over these trips, members have traveled to nearly every corner of China, including Xinjiang and Tibet. In their discussions, they have covered a wide range of themes important to the US-China relationship. Staffers participating in such trips have clearly advanced their understanding of Chinese developments.
Congress and Turmoil in US-China Relations, 1989–2001
The number of the congressional staff delegations to China slowed following the collapse of congressional support for engagement with China after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Congressional anger and the impulse to punish the Chinese government overrode past interest in constructive engagement. As a result, Beijing began relying more heavily on the US business community and its organizations, notably the Emergency Committee for American Trade, to persuade Congress not to end the most-favored-nation tariff treatment for Chinese imports. The Chinese embassy and various lobbyists who were, or at least claimed to be, supported by the Chinese government also tried to limit the damage by seeking to convince congressional members that conditions in China were much better than those depicted in American media at the time.
Based on the reputation of its past efforts, the US-Asia Institute, presumably with the encouragement of its Chinese counterparts, strove to resume the staff dialogues and attracted a wide range of senior staff and support personnel, including some of those working for the harshest congressional critics of China's crackdown. One trip in December 1989 featured very heated debates with Chinese officials, especially after it was announced that national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger were also in Beijing for talks with Chinese leaders and that the two had made an earlier secret trip in July, soon after the crackdown. As the Bush administration had publicly promised Congress that all such contacts would end, the staff delegates' anger at and criticism of China's repression was compounded by their harsh reaction to the Bush administration's actions.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "China's Influence and American Interests"
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Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations,
Foreword,
Acknowledgments,
Policy Principles for Constructive Vigilance,
Introduction,
1 Congress,
2 State and Local Governments,
3 The Chinese American Community,
4 Universities,
5 Think Tanks,
6 Media,
7 Corporations,
8 Technology and Research,
APPENDIX 1 China's Influence Operations Bureaucracy,
APPENDIX 2 China's Influence Activities in Select Countries,
Australia,
Canada,
France,
Germany,
Japan,
New Zealand,
Singapore and ASEAN,
United Kingdom,
APPENDIX 3 Chinese-Language Media Landscape,
Dissenting Opinion,
Afterword,
Working Group Participants,
Index,
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