Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (60 page)

That afternoon, Deng met with Brzezinski for over two hours and then over dinner, as the two discussed global strategy and laying the ground for talks on normalization. Deng, knowing that Brzezinski had just arrived, graciously suggested “you must be tired,” but Brzezinski replied, “I am exhilarated.” Deng and Brzezinski each firmly upheld his nation's point of view, but Brzezinski later wrote, “Deng immediately appealed to me. Bright, alert, and shrewd, he was quick on the uptake, with a good sense of humor, tough,
and very direct. . . . I was impressed by his sense of purpose and drive. Deng quickly got to the point. . . . The Chinese side speaks straightforwardly about their views and ideas. Deng explained that ‘it is not difficult to understand China . . . Chairman Mao Zedong was a soldier, Zhou Enlai was a soldier, and I, too, am a soldier.’” (To which Brzezinski replied that Americans were also very direct.) Brzezinski was so enthusiastic about his visit with Deng that on May 26, when he reported back to Carter, Carter wrote in his diary, “Zbig . . . was overwhelmed with the Chinese. I told him he had been seduced.”
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In his talks with Brzezinski, Deng probed to see how prepared the United States was to break relations with Taiwan. “The question remains how to make up one's mind. If President Carter has made up his mind on this issue, I think it will be easier to solve. . . . What do you think should be done in order to realize the normalization?” Brzezinski, after explaining Carter's determination to move ahead and to accept the Chinese principle regarding cutting off relations with Taiwan, proposed that the two sides begin confidential talks about normalization in June. Deng immediately accepted the proposal, while continuing to inquire about what concrete measures the United States would take to implement the three principles on Taiwan. When he said, “We look forward to the day when President Carter makes up his mind,” Brzezinski replied: “I have told you before, President Carter has made up his mind.”
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Without spelling out any concrete actions the United States would take, Brzezinski repeated that the United States accepted the three principles. He went on to say that the United States planned to release a statement stressing the importance of the mainland and Taiwan resolving the Taiwan issue peacefully. Deng assured him that China did not object to the United States making such a statement, but “we cannot accept this as a condition. Taiwan is a domestic issue. It is an issue of basic sovereignty.”
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Brzezinski concluded from this that if the United States were to make such a public statement, China would not publicly oppose it. Brzezinski also informed Deng that, beginning in July, Leonard Woodcock would be prepared to enter into serious discussions with Huang Hua to explore whether normalization could be achieved on mutually acceptable terms.
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Deng expressed concern about the military expansion of the Soviet Union and he repeated his view that the United States was not responding with sufficient firmness. Deng talked of the growing military cooperation between the Soviet Union and Vietnam, as evidenced by Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap's two recent trips to Moscow, one in March and the other in early May. Deng, convinced that it was in China's interest to have the West build
up its forces in Europe, which would lead the Soviet Union to move troops from Asia to Europe, argued, as Mao and Zhou Enlai had done earlier, that the Soviets' major goals were in Europe, not Asia. Deng needled Brzezinski, pushing the United States to stand tougher in responding to Soviet actions. “Perhaps,” he said, “you have a fear of offending the Soviet Union. Is that right?” Brzezinski replied, “I can assure you that my inclination to be fearful of offending the Soviet Union is rather limited.” Deng pressed hard, pointing out the disadvantages to the United States of signing a SALT agreement with the Soviets, saying, “Whenever you are about to conclude an agreement with the Soviet Union, it is the product of concession on the U.S. side to please the Soviet Union.” Brzezinski responded, “I would be willing to make a little bet with you as to who is less popular in the Soviet Union—you or me.”
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Brzezinski also sought to use his visit to develop closer relationships between the bureaucracies in Beijing and Washington, and the Chinese responded positively. He brought several U.S. officials from different government departments to engage in more detailed discussions with their counterparts. Morton Abramowitz, a senior diplomat then on loan to the Defense Department, for example, met with his Chinese counterparts in defense to discuss issues such as their respective analyses of the Soviet Union.

During their meeting, Deng pressed Brzezinski on U.S. restrictions on the export of technology to China. He cited three high-tech import cases: a U.S. supercomputer, a Japanese high-speed computer with U.S. parts, and a scanner. In all three cases, the U.S. manufacturers were eager to sell, but they had been blocked by the U.S. government.

Also during the discussions, Deng alluded to his interest in visiting the United States, saying he had only about three years left as top leader. From this, Brzezinski concluded that Deng had a sense of urgency about making progress on Sino-American relations. Brzezinski, knowing that Deng would not visit the United States until normalization had been completed, showed his confidence that they would finish such talks quickly by inviting Deng to have dinner at his Washington home. Deng immediately accepted.
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Brzezinski also encouraged Deng to deepen China's relationship with Japan, and after the Brzezinski visit, Deng moved quickly to conclude the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship. On his way home, Brzezinski did his part as well, stopping off in Japan to brief Japanese officials about U.S. plans to begin negotiations with China on normalization. When Brzezinski returned to Washington, Carter, even as he teased Brzezinski about being seduced by the Chinese, judged the visit a success. Discussions on normalization
would begin soon and relations had warmed: shortly afterward, when the United States asked that Beijing cease its stream of public criticism of U.S. policies, China complied immediately.

To keep up the pressure on the United States to move quickly on normalization, only one day after Deng talked with Brzezinski, Deng told an Italian delegation that China would welcome trade and technology exchanges with the United States, but would give preferential treatment to those countries with which it had regular diplomatic relations.
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On June 2, less than two weeks after Brzezinski met with Deng, Huang Hua in Washington told Cyrus Vance that if he wanted Deng to visit the United States, which he would do only after normalization was completed, they had to work harder, because Deng was getting older. On August 6, Deng reiterated, this time to an Austrian delegation, that China would give preference in trade to countries with which it had formal diplomatic relations.
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And on September 27, Chai Zemin, head of the Chinese Liaison Office in Washington, told Brzezinski that the pace of the normalization negotiations was too slow.
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The Leap Forward in Educational Exchanges

When it became likely that relations with the United States could be normalized within a few months, Deng focused immediately on the area at the top of his American wish list: not trade, not investment, but science. To Deng, science was the most crucial factor for achieving modernization, and the United States was far ahead. Fortunately, his combination of responsibilities (foreign relations, science, technology, and education) gave him the authority to move in this area even prior to the Third Plenum. He would not send students to the United States before normalization, but as soon as relations were normalized he wanted to be prepared to send young Chinese scientists to the United States for further training.

At China's first National Science Conference in March 1978, Chinese scientists were told by the Chinese government, for the first time since the early 1950s, that they were not only permitted, but encouraged, to have contacts with fellow scientists in the West.
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Relatives of Chinese-American scientists who had remained in China and had become targets in the numerous campaigns after 1949 were given better housing and better working conditions, and Chinese scientists were no longer labeled landlords, capitalists, or rightists. It was impossible, of course, to make up for the years of torment and broken careers, but the government gave compensation for their past suffering,
and high officials in effect apologized to them (while recommending that when they met Western scientists they should not elaborate about past troubles with the Chinese government).

Deng encouraged not only Chinese-Americans but all Western scientists to visit China, and American scientists, who overwhelmingly believed in the universality of scientific research, were happy to oblige. From July 6–10, 1978, President Carter's science adviser, Frank Press, led the highest-level delegation of U.S. scientists ever to visit any foreign country. Press, formerly an MIT professor specializing in earthquake science, had been chairman of the U.S. Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China (CSCPRC) from 1975 to 1977, and therefore took a special interest in scholarly exchanges with China. Deng spoke to Press's delegation about China's backwardness in science and technology and expressed his concerns about American constraints on high-tech exports. He also spoke of China's need for foreign investment.
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In the question period following Deng's presentation, Richard Atkinson, head of the National Science Foundation, asked Deng if he feared that Chinese science students abroad might defect. Deng replied that he was not worried; Chinese students, unlike their Soviet counterparts, he said, were loyal to their country, and even those who studied abroad and did not return immediately would, in the long run, still be an asset for China. At the time, Frank Press expected that, as in the past, Chinese political leaders would continue to keep tight control over their scientists going to the United States and that they would be cautious about expanding scientific exchanges.

Frank Press was taken aback as Deng proposed that the United States immediately accept seven hundred Chinese science students, with the larger goal of accepting tens of thousands within a few years.
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Deng was so intent on receiving a prompt answer that Press, considering this one of the most important breakthroughs in his career, called President Carter, waking him at 3 a.m. Washington time, to ask permission to agree that seven hundred Chinese students would be welcomed immediately and that far larger numbers could be accommodated within a few years. Carter, rarely awakened in the middle of the night during his presidency, responded positively, though he wondered why Press had woken him up to ask the question—he felt he had already given Press the authority to approve such requests.
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The Press delegation received great attention from the Chinese. The
People's Daily
rarely published speeches by foreigners, but in this case it printed Press's banquet speech stressing the advantages of globalization. And Michel
Oksenberg, Brzezinski's deputy for China policy who sat in on some fourteen meetings with Deng, said he never saw Deng more intellectually curious and more involved in articulating his vision about China's future.
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Indeed, with the exception of President Nixon's visit, Press received the warmest reception a U.S. delegation had received in Beijing since 1949.
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Since Deng would not send students abroad before the two countries established normal diplomatic relations, the first group from China, some fifty students, eager but tense about whether they would later be in trouble for their American connections as their elders had been, flew off to America in early 1979 shortly after normalization. In the first five years of exchanges, some 19,000 Chinese students would go to the United States for study, and the numbers would continue to increase.

Breakthrough on Normalization, June–December 1978

Following Brzezinski's visit to China, the United States and China began secret discussions on how to structure negotiations for normalization. Both sides realized from the beginning that Taiwan was the issue that would either make or break the deal. On June 28, Vance cabled Woodcock with the U.S. proposals for normalization talks, to be presented to Foreign Minister Huang Hua: if cultural and commercial contacts were able to continue between the people of Taiwan and the people of the United States while the Chinese peacefully resolve the Taiwan question, the president was prepared to normalize relations within the framework of the three principles enunciated by China. Meetings would be held in Beijing every two weeks to discuss sequentially a series of issues that had to be resolved before normalization. Woodcock also proposed that at the regular Beijing meetings the two parties first discuss the nature of the post-normalization U.S. presence in Taiwan and the nature of formal statements announcing normalization. That is, negotiators would first deal with the easy issues to show progress; only later would they take on the more difficult issues, such as U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Their goal was to have an agreement by December 15, several weeks after the U.S. Congressional elections.
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The first meeting, held on July 5, was a forty-minute session during which the two sides discussed procedures and each made an initial general statement on its Taiwan position.
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