Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (63 page)

In preparation for Deng's arrival in Washington, Vance and his staff prepared for President Carter and other officials who would be receiving Deng briefing materials on Deng and the significance of the trip. In a thirteen-page memo, Vance called Deng “a remarkable man—impatient, feisty, self-confidently outspoken, direct, forceful, and clever.” He predicted that Deng's objectives could include helping Carter to sell normalization to Congress and to the American people, broadening the U.S.-PRC relationship so that changes would become irreversible, pressing the United States to resist further Soviet expansion, and stimulating U.S. hostility to Vietnam. But the significance of the relaxation of tensions between the United States and China was even
broader than these individual goals; it could “have a dramatic impact on the political and strategic landscape of Asia, and on the world.”
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Before Deng's arrival, his trip had attracted the greatest public interest of any foreign leader's visit since Khrushchev's 1959 trip to the United States. The U.S. media were full of stories about Deng's comeback, his decision to push reform and opening to the West, his commitment to normalizing relations, and now his trip to the United States.
Time
magazine, in its January 1 issue, named Deng 1978 “Man of the Year” for his role in taking a closed Communist country onto a new open path. It acknowledged that Hua Guofeng was still the chairman, but called Deng the “architect” of China's four modernizations.
Time
, unaware of how much Hua had been wounded at the Central Party Work Conference, described Deng as the chief executive officer of China and Hua as chairman of the board.

For the American public, long curious about the mysterious, closed, ancient civilization on the other side of the world, Deng's trip provided a fascinating spectacle that attracted even more attention than Nixon's 1972 trip to China. Would this resilient, tiny leader be more like a “Communist”—rigid and ideological—or more open like Americans? U.S. businesspeople, with visions of what they might sell to China as its huge potential market opened up, vied to receive invitations to the state banquet and other meetings. And news agencies that hoped to establish bureaus in China competed for chances to be noticed by Deng and his delegation.

President Carter, like Deng, appeared subdued and serious as the trip began. His efforts to bring about peace in the Middle East, which originally had seemed so promising, had just collapsed and his popular support in the polls had dropped to around 30 percent. He had expressed concern about how the public and Congress would respond to his decision to break formal relations with Taiwan and to normalize relations with the Communist mainland. Would members of Congress, kept in the dark during the negotiations over normalization, express their annoyance at not being consulted? Among Taiwan supporters, Carter was vulnerable to charges that he had abandoned an old partner, and that he notified Chiang Ching-kuo in such a disrespectful manner: by having U.S. officials awaken him in the wee hours to tell him that later that day the United States would announce it was breaking diplomatic relations with Taiwan and normalizing relations with the mainland.

Deng's trip had been arranged quickly; he arrived in Washington on January 28, less than six weeks after the December 15 agreement. Officials on
both sides worked very hard to make the trip a success, and the visit generally went smoothly. Deng's plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base and he was taken by limousine to Blair House in the capital, where distinguished U.S. government guests were housed. Knowing of Deng's habit of using a spittoon, his American hosts placed several shiny new spittoons in Blair House. Other details had been carefully considered. During his trip Deng would not be taken to places with military equipment or other technology that could not be sold to China. Any meat served to the Chinese delegation was sliced in small portions rather than huge pieces so as to be easier to manage for officials accustomed to eating with chopsticks. Indeed, when Georgia governor George Busbee asked Deng if he had discovered anything unique about America, Deng, tongue in cheek, replied that he didn't know Americans had veal at every meal. Conscientious hosts in Washington and Atlanta, briefed on Deng's preferences, which included meat like veal, had served him veal for several dinners in a row. At his next meal, no veal was served.

U.S. hosts were worried about security, especially at open-air appearances. During the welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn, two men in the press section who yelled “Long Live Chairman Mao” were whisked away by security officers, and Deng appeared unconcerned.
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In an era before metal detectors could screen for weapons on people at entrances to buildings, security personnel took what precautions they could. One concern was bad weather impeding the flow of the limousines. Aside from Washington, then, two of the four cities selected for the tour, Atlanta and Houston, had warm climates and the third, Seattle, had a mild climate. It was natural to select Atlanta in Carter's home state. When Woodcock had asked Deng on January 1 what he wanted to see during his trip, Deng had responded immediately that he wanted to see space exploration facilities and other advanced technologies.
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After Houston, where he was shown NASA facilities as well as state-of-the-art oil-drilling technology, he flew to Seattle, where Boeing was producing the new jet planes that China was just beginning to purchase. Deng was interested in production, not consumption. He toured no shopping malls or private homes (except for a dinner at Brzezinski's home, with guests). In Atlanta, he visited one of Ford Motor Company's most modern plants, where he was guided by Henry Ford II, who had previously met with Deng in Beijing.

Deng had no high-ranking adviser on America to compare with Liao Chengzhi on Japan, but he had Foreign Minister Huang Hua, who had lived for several years in the United States, and Li Shenzhi, head of the Institute of American Studies of the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, who had conducted
a serious study of American history and religion. In addition, Deng's main interpreter, Ji Chaozhu, had spent many of his childhood years in the United States and had studied at Harvard until his junior year when he returned to China in 1950.
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During Deng's visit to the United States, officials at the Chinese Liaison Office in Washington, which on March 1 was to become the embassy of the People's Republic of China, were so overstretched that they were not even answering the phones. Having learned English in China and with little experience in the United States, Chinese officials were overwhelmed with their responsibilities, which included security, logistics, coordination with their American hosts, preparation for toasts and speeches, and inquiries from some 950 Western press people, as well as the thirty-three representatives of Chinese news agencies. They strained to get things right.

The Chinese media gave wide coverage to Deng's visit. China then had only one television set for every 1,000 people, and most of these were located in the offices of important officials. Single sets elsewhere were often viewed simultaneously by groups of many people. Chinese cities had only one TV station, the national station. Deng's entourage included not only reporters from the leading papers and from the New China News Agency (Xinhua), but also China's leading news commentator, Zhao Zhongxiang, who while in the United States was in charge of moderating a half-hour television program that was beamed back to China at the end of each day. In addition, a Chinese film crew was busy putting together a documentary film that would be shown in China at the end of the tour. For many Chinese, Deng's trip was a chance to see America and to get a sense of the country, its modern factories, its political leaders, and ordinary American people.
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Deng encouraged this interest, hoping that it would help Chinese viewers realize just how backward China was and how much needed to be changed.

During his first few days of public appearances, Deng remained reserved. He was formal, serious, and extremely proper, even when waving his hand. He did not hold press conferences and he revealed little of what he was feeling.

Washington, D.C.

On January 28, after landing in Washington and resting for a few hours, Deng, as he had agreed to in May, attended a small, informal dinner at the home of his anti-Soviet and pro-normalization ally, Brzezinski. Although Deng understandably seemed tired from the long flight, Brzezinski reported
that he and his wife displayed excellent humor and Deng proved to be a master of quick repartee. When Brzezinski said that the Chinese and French civilizations both think of themselves as superior to all others, Deng said, “Let us put it this way. In East Asia, Chinese food is best. In Europe, French food is best.”
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When Brzezinski commented that Carter had difficulties with normalization due to the (pro-Taiwan) China lobby, and asked whether Deng had encountered similar domestic opposition, Deng in a flash responded, “Yes. I did; 17 million Chinese on Taiwan were opposed.”
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At one point, when Deng was asked how China would respond if it were attacked by the Soviet Union, he told his listeners, including Vice President Mondale, Secretary Vance, Brzezinski, and Michel Oksenberg, that the Chinese had nuclear weapons that could take out Bratsk Dam, Novosibirsk, and possibly even Moscow. Like Mao, who had said China could survive a nuclear war and an invasion by carrying on a protracted war that wore down the invaders, Deng had thought through the worst-case scenarios. Amid the informal conversation, Deng solemnly told Brzezinski that he would like a private group meeting with the president to talk about Vietnam.
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The next day, January 29, Deng had morning and afternoon sessions with President Carter, a lunch hosted by Secretary Vance, and a state dinner. Carter wrote in his diary that night, “It's a pleasure to negotiate with him.”
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Deng, he wrote, listened very carefully and asked questions about Carter's comments. At their third and final session, which was held the following morning, Brzezinski reported that Carter and Deng were frank and direct; their discussions were more like those between allies than between adversaries.

At the opening session, Deng asked Carter to speak first. Carter presented his view of the international situation, emphasizing that the United States felt a responsibility to assist the people of the world to achieve a better quality of life, including political participation, liberation from persecution by their governments, and freedom from outside hegemons. When it was his turn, Deng said that Chinese leaders had always felt that the greatest dangers came from the two dominant powers, but recently they had begun to understand that the danger from the United States was less than that from the Soviet Union. Deng then became intense and deadly serious as he spoke of the looming dangers of Soviet expansionism. He acknowledged that it was not advantageous at this point for the United States and China to form an alliance, but he believed that the two should cooperate closely in resisting expansion by the Soviet Union.

Deng described Vietnam as the Cuba of the East, a Soviet base threatening China from the south. In Deng's view, the Soviets and Vietnamese had established an Asian collective-security system that endangered all nearby countries. And because “the Chinese need a long period of peace to realize their full modernization,” China and the United States should coordinate activities to constrain the Soviets. It was not yet possible for China to have direct contact with South Korea, but Deng hoped as well that North and South Korea would hold talks leading to a reunification.
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Japan, too, which Deng had visited in October, could cooperate to limit Soviet expansionism. (Just before he left for the United States, Deng had told Hedley Donovan of
Time
magazine that China should work with both Japan and the United States against the Russian polar bear.
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Toward the end of their afternoon meeting—the second of the three sessions, held January 29—Deng again requested a small private group meeting with Carter to discuss a confidential matter. Carter, Mondale, Vance, Brzezinski, Deng, and his interpreter then left the larger group and went into the Oval Office. There, during an hour-long meeting, in a grave but resolute manner Deng told of his plans to deliver a punitive strike in Vietnam. He explained the seriousness of the dangers posed by Soviet and Vietnamese ambitions in Southeast Asia, beginning with the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Deng said it was necessary to disrupt Soviet calculations and teach the Vietnamese an appropriate, limited lesson. Carter tried to discourage Deng from attacking Vietnam, but he did not say he opposed the move. Instead he expressed concern that if China attacked Vietnam, it would be seen as an aggressor. He knew that would make it more difficult to win Congressional support for cooperation with China—especially since one of the administration's arguments for expanded relations with China had been to preserve peace.

The next day when Deng and Carter met privately to conclude discussions on the Chinese attack on Vietnam, Carter read Deng a handwritten note he had prepared overnight explaining why he advised against such a move. Among other points, Carter said that “armed conflict initiated by China would cause serious concern in the United States concerning the general character of China and the future peaceful settlement of the Taiwan Issue.”
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Deng explained why he stood behind his decision, but he assured Carter that if Chinese troops attacked, they would withdraw after ten to twenty days. Moreover, Deng insisted, the beneficial results of such a Chinese attack would be long-lasting. If China did not teach the Soviets a lesson this time, the Soviet
Union would use Vietnam in the same way it had used Cuba. (Deng also predicted that the Soviets would move into Afghanistan, which in fact the Soviets did the following December.) Deng and Carter then returned to the larger group. Carter noted that Deng, having completed his truly serious business, became more relaxed and lighthearted.
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