James Sasser

In 1996, when he arrived in Beijing as the newly minted U.S. ambassador to China, James R. Sasser was a neophyte in Chinese affairs and international diplomacy. He had been appointed to the post by President Bill Clinton after losing his bid for a fourth term in the Senate.

This week, Sasser leaves Beijing after a tumultuous three-and-a-half-year stint that forced him to learn his job in a hurry as Sino-U.S. relations whipsawed between extreme highs and lows.

At the beginning of Sasser’s tenure, relations between the world’s most powerful nation and its most populous one were in crisis. Beijing, hoping to intimidate Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, fired missiles perilously close to the Taiwanese coast. In response, Washington sent two U.S. aircraft carriers to waters off Taiwan.

Sasser helped patch up Sino-American ties, enough for Chinese President Jiang Zemin to make a historic trip to the U.S. a year later, in 1997, and for Clinton to come to China last June--a triumphant visit that was the first by a U.S. president to China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

Barely a year later, U.S.-China relations have again plunged, battered by allegations of Chinese espionage, disagreements over human rights and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing last month of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital. The bombing, which killed three people, sparked anti-U.S. demonstrations not seen here since the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution--protests that trapped Sasser in the U.S. embassy for several days.

Despite these troubles, Sasser, a Tennessean who exudes Southern gentility, is going ahead with his previously announced plans to leave his post and return to the United States. The former Democratic senator, an attorney, will do some speaking and writing and is available, he says, to help his friend Vice President Al Gore run for president. Former Adm. Joseph Prueher has been nominated to fill his place in Beijing.

Sasser, 61, is married with two grown children. He sat down for a conversation last week in the ambassador’s residence, still under repair from damage done by protesters.

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Question: Now that Sino-U.S. ties are at a low point, how do you feel about leaving Beijing at such a crucial juncture?

Answer: During the three and a half years of my tenure here, President Clinton, President Jiang [Zemin], Vice President Gore and Premier Zhu [Rongji] have built bridges between China and the U.S. that will make it much easier to resume a normal and productive relationship than it was prior to my arrival here. Most of these bridges are still intact. Some have suffered superficial damage as a result of the NATO bombing, but their structures are still intact. So I anticipate that we’re going to move into a period of better relations in the latter part of this year.

The signs are already there; the recovery is coming so much quicker. Already we hear statements by President Clinton . . . that the U.S. values the Sino-American relationship and intends to work diligently to repair the damage. And on the Chinese side, [there have been] statements made by the principal architects of Chinese foreign policy . . . about the value of the U.S.-China relationship. . . .

I did have second thoughts about leaving [now]. But I actually came to China only for two years, and I’ve been here three and a half. I stayed on in order to arrange President Clinton’s visit . . . and thereafter there was some thought on the part of the Chinese and others that I should stay on at least through Premier Zhu’s visit to the U.S. [in April]. But now the personal considerations have become so overriding that after three and a half years I have to return home.

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Q: Were you surprised at the intensity of the Chinese reaction to the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade?

A: Yes, I was. I think the reaction to the bombing surprised many, including the Chinese government. The news of this bombing, which frankly was hyped to some extent by the Chinese government, ignited a nationalist sentiment in China, particularly among students, which was surprising. There is in China a pilot light of nationalism . . . as a result of China’s history of the last 150 years. Something comes along occasionally that ignites this pilot light, and in this case it was the bombing of their embassy.

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Q: Do you think the Chinese government will ever accept NATO’s explanation that the bombing was a mistake?

A: I am very doubtful the Chinese government will ever officially acknowledge that this bombing was a mistake on the part of the U.S. But I’m confident that many leaders in the governmental sector and in intellectual-academic circles in China will acknowledge privately and do understand that it was accidental. . . .

Important leaders never felt this bombing was the result of a policy decision of the U.S. government. But there was a widespread feeling that this was caused by some rogue element in the U.S. government, and that feeling was bolstered by what the Chinese perceived to be principally false or distorted accusations made in the Cox report [on Chinese espionage].

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Q: Last year, presidents Clinton and Jiang boasted of a “strategic partnership” between the U.S. and China. In light of recent events, is the idea of strategic partnership still viable?

A: Well, no one ever said that a strategic partnership with China was a reality. What President Clinton and the Chinese president were saying is that we needed to work to build a strategic partnership between the U.S. as the sole remaining superpower and China as the world’s largest developing country and already a major regional power in Asia. I’m confident that efforts to build this constructive relationship will continue on to the end of this Clinton-Gore administration and even afterwards, no matter who’s elected president.

A strategic partnership is not only possible, but highly probable over the next decade, for a lot of reasons. One, the economies of China and the U.S. are mutually complementary, the U.S. producing high-technology, service-oriented goods and China producing labor-intensive, rather low-tech products that are no longer manufactured in the U.S. in great quantity. China and the U.S. have a mutual interest in a stable and secure Asia. China cannot continue to grow economically unless there is stability, and economic growth is the name of the game for the Chinese government and the Chinese people.

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Q: Are leaders now in place in China’s government, particularly Jiang and Zhu, the best the U.S. could hope to have?

A: Both Jiang and Zhu are able leaders in their different ways. Jiang is very able and adroit at managing the political structure, which is important, and Zhu is very [able] in dealing with reform of the economy and government structures.

But there is also developing in China a group of younger leaders who are going to be able to carry on in the not-too-distant future. They’re more able, better-educated. This present group of leaders are almost exclusively engineers, Russian-educated, to some extent. But underneath this group are leaders educated in fields other than engineering; many have studied abroad. When their time comes, they’ll be able to move forward.

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Q: Over time, do you foresee a peaceful transition to democracy in China?

A: Yes, I do, but I’m not as confident of that today as I was prior to [the bombing on] May 8, 1999.

There is an undercurrent of repressed frustration and anger in the Chinese people that can certainly burst out in ways that are self-destructive. Rather than being a militaristic, expansive power and pushing out, in modern Chinese history of the last few centuries, the Chinese turn inward and take their frustration and anger out upon themselves.

But having said that, I think that China is moving in the direction of political liberalization and of democracy, although not perhaps along the Western model or the American model. We’re now seeing village elections in China, and there’s pressure for taking those elections to a higher level, which, in due course, I think will occur. But we may be talking about decades rather than just a few years.

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Q: How do you view the human-rights situation in China now?

A: “Human rights” is primarily a Western concept in the modern sense. From the standpoint of the average Chinese, the human-rights situation here is better today than perhaps it’s been in centuries, and certainly better than it was in the 1960s and 1970s during the Cultural Revolution. That’s not to say there aren’t still great problems in the human-rights field when looked at through Western eyes and through the eyes of many Chinese. But here again, I think there has been a gradual liberalization that, in many ways, has been two steps forward, one step backwards. Then also, we Westerners encapsulate in the words “human rights” political rights, and many Asians do not. To them, human rights are the right to food, shelter, job, etc.

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Q: Is China moving toward the rule of law, and what is the U.S. doing to help legal reform in China?

A: The Chinese government is very interested in instituting a rule of law, for [its] own reasons. They see that as a way of maintaining social stability and also realize that enforceable commercial laws are necessary if China’s economy is going to enjoy the foreign investment that’s helped fuel its substantial growth.

The American Bar Assn. and others, including the U.S. government, have been promoting exchanges that would encourage China to develop a body of both commercial law and criminal and civil law. There’s been a great deal of interest shown in that by the judiciary in China. But the Chinese would be the first to say one of their problems is the shortage of lawyers.

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Q: With China trying to become the preeminent power in Asia, is it on a collision course with its neighbors?

A: It appears to me that the goal of the Chinese government is not to become the preeminent power in Asia at the present time but to build an economy that makes it one of the preeminent economic powers in Asia and, perhaps, in the world. Following from that economic strength, certainly China could emerge as the preeminent power in Asia.

My sense is that what the Chinese want, rather than being the dominant power, is to be a power that is respected and whose wishes are taken into consideration by the other great powers. . . . If history is any guide to the future, China is not going to be an expansive, aggressive country beyond its borders. It will certainly want its wishes to be taken into consideration and will want to have a significant voice in the councils of the region and certainly in the world, as they’ve evidenced in the [U.N.] Security Council.

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Q: Do you think your lack of experience in China, before you arrived, affected your performance as ambassador?

A: My training, my experience of 18 years in the U.S. Senate, was invaluable as ambassador to China. In my first meeting with President Jiang, I felt we established a chemistry of one politician speaking to another, which has been very helpful in building the relationship and which endures to this day. I have a sense of some of the political pressures that Jiang and Premier Zhu and others are under and some of their needs to try to make the necessary compromises in their domestic political situation to continue the reform and outward reach of the Chinese government and the Chinese people.

One of the things that I’ve been able to bring to this relationship that has been somewhat unique is the rapport with the American government at the highest levels, the president and the vice president, and also many of my old colleagues in the Senate. So rather than always having to go strictly through State Department channels, sometimes when we needed to make a quick decision or to get something done in a hurry, I could simply reach the White House or the secretary of State or others and make the case for it. They didn’t always agree with me, but at least they’d give me a hearing.

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Q: What advice would you give your eventual successor?

A: When I first got here, there was a delightful old French ambassador who was retiring. I was trying to learn the Chinese language. He told me, “Young man, your time would be better spent learning China than learning Chinese.”

Another bit of advice I’d give my successor is to go back to the U.S. at least every 90 days and go see those who deal with the foreign-policy establishment there. Communication is so difficult with the policymakers when you’re at the long, 6,000-mile end of the reach of the U.S. government, with a 12-hour time difference. You need to go back, sit down, look people in the eye, get their attention and tell them what your views are. That’s extraordinarily important.