China and the U.S. With James R. Lilley
Former U.S. Ambassador to China
Wednesday, April 11, 2001; 3 p.m. EDT
After an 11-day standoff, the Chinese government said today that it will release the 24 detained crewmembers of a U.S. Navy surveillance plane.
James R. Lilley, former U.S. Ambassador to China, spoke to washingtonpost.com's Meredith Bragg about the situation in China and the release of American detainees. Ambassador Lilley was interviewed via audio with questions submitted in advance by readers.
The audio and transcript follow.
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Miami, Fla.:
Do you feel that the letter saying that the U.S. is "very sorry" makes the U.S. look weak on its stance with China?
James R. Lilley: I do not think it makes us look weak. I think they were very carefully selected words that fit the occasion, that took care of Chinese concerns and was short of an apology. Feeling sorry is one thing -- apologizing is another. You feel sorry because a person died, you apologize because you did something wrong. We refused to apologize. We feel sorry this young pilot died.
Washington, D.C.:
I have read that the Chinese people are upset with the U.S. for the collision, but these reports seem to come from China's government controlled media. Can we believe them? Are the Chinese people being told our side of the story?
James R. Lilley: They are definitely NOT being told our side of the story. They are only being told the Chinese version which is very inflammatory and incorrect. There is a residual anti-foreignism and anti-Americanism that has been nurtured in that society for about seven or eight years. When you throw a match into that gasoline it goes off and the match has been thrown in. There is a genuine feeling of outrage on the part of the Chinese people but it is sort of an emotional thing, it is not logical. Logic is simply absent. It is a bunch of clichιs that they repeat, which in this case often are not true.
So, yes there is outrage, yes there is indignation, but there is a lot of that on our side too.
Cleveland, Ohio:
How will the release of our military personnel impact the detention of the American academics still in China
James R. Lilley: Unfortunately I do not think that it will have much effect because I think the Chinese see them as two very separate cases with different objectives in each case. In the case of this military thing -- it fell in their lap. They didn't expect it. They reacted to it in a rather fumbling way and got the facts wrong. The facts that were wrong were reported by the military up to the leadership, which then went off and demanded an immediate apology when they didn't have the correct facts.
Delray, Va.:
How do you see relations between China and the United States moving in the next five to ten years?
James R. Lilley: I think that there will be ups and downs all the way through. There will be other incidents that cause difficulties. We have places where we are in contention - in the military and political sense -- around the periphery of China where we have forward deployed forces and they are extending the limits of their activities - projecting their power more and more. This is going to come up against us. We have got to devise rules for dealing with it so to not cause the sort of flap that occurred this time.
But I think in the trade area, which we should emphasize now with China joining the WTO, keeping investment flows to the United States, giving them permanent normal trading relations, correcting the trade balance and dealing with intellectual property rights, there is an awful lot on the economic agenda that we have to push in the next five years. We will have ups and downs, but if we can focus on what is important -- namely the openness of our people, open markets, opening up of the Chinese side, reform of the state run enterprise and reform of the banking system -- I think we can move the process forward where we can actually have common economic prosperity.
Arlington, Va.:
How would you have handles this situation if you were still Ambassador?
James R. Lilley: I think we did just about right. I couldn't criticize us in any way. I think President Bush handled it well -- with firmness, with politeness. The initial accusation that his words on April 2 were too threatening - this is simply not true, they were very carefully picked. And then he regretted, Colin Powell regretted, (Condoleezza) Rice regretted. The Chinese got pretty much what they wanted without us compromising our position or apologizing and taking guilt. That is terribly important, in the Chinese sense, that we didn't do that. Because had we done that we would have just invited all kinds of other demands, from compensation to explanations, etc. etc.
I think we handled it right and I don't think we made any secret concessions to them.
Chicago, Ill.:
Do you support the resumption of U.S. surveillance flights off the China coast?
James R. Lilley: I don't think we have any choice. Their military is building up very rapidly. They are extending their submarines and Sovremenny-class destroyers, they airplanes are going further and further out all the time, they are deploying missiles at about the rate of fifty a year on the Fujian coast, they may be conducting an underground test of nuclear weapons, they are developing these long range ICBMs -- DF31/ DF41 - we've got to watch these things very closely and I think we've got to have surveillance flights to do it because satellites can't do the whole thing.
Edinburg, Va.:
Now that china is set to release the Americans, attention will focus on the plane. And, indeed, the American plane may contain important evidence about the nature of the accident. Due to the nature of the plane's mission, its location and altitude were probably recorded with extreme precision. Using data from the flight recorders - the time and place of the accident, the timing of the plane's roll in relation to damage to the outboard engine, etc. - all can be determined with high accuracy. This doesn't include that one or more planes may have recorded the event on video. How would such evidence play a part in the negotiations?
James R. Lilley: I think that is a very good point. I don't think the Chinese are at all anxious to give that plane back for just the reasons you cited. They know that this issue was misrepresented when the PLA told their top leadership that the Americans had deliberately turned and hit their plane. I think our data collecting systems on the plane will reflect that that probably wasn't true. Therefore it is not in their interest to release this data, so I think you are going to have a lot of trouble getting it out. If it supports their case you can get it out right away. We will have to see. If they hold back on it, it probably doesn't support their case. So, let's keep a very careful eye on it.
Washington, D.C.: Thank you for taking the time to respond to questions. In my opinion, the Bush administration deserves little applause for finally securing the release of the crew. Unless American officials have been spreading propaganda themselves, a notorious Chinese airman flew perilously close to a turbo-prop plane, couldn't avoid collision and almost took the lives of two dozen Americans. In return, China gets a thinly veiled apology, withholds the American plane for at least another week and escapes serious PR damage. Why is America (speaking through the Bush administration) "very sorry" that this incident happened in China? How did China get the upper hand?
James R. Lilley: I don't think they did get the upper hand. I think they backed off the apology which would have been an admission of guilt. The "very sorry" was in connection with the death of the pilot and with the fact that we had intruded into their airspace. The latter thing; I think the Chinese had insisted upon it and it was their mistake because our plane had been hit by their plane. It had fallen eight thousand feet, two engines were out, it almost crashed and killed 24 people, it flew into Hainan and they quibbled with us because it didn't have permission to land. I think that is rather ludicrous.
Okay, so we said we are "very sorry" it intruded into their airspace, I don't think this makes us look bad, I think it makes them look bad.
We did it to get our pilots out. We did not give them the abject apology they insisted. I don't think we look bad on this one at all. I think we deserve a lot of credit for drawing these fine lines between apology and regret and yet getting our 24 out in 10 days. That is quite an accomplishment.
Fairfax, Va.:
What impact will this have on American business in China?
James R. Lilley: I hope it will have almost none. I hope that right now, after most of the other incidents that were negative, we have a great upturn in the relationship. I hope then the Chinese will then begin to deal with us and throw some deals our way, to make the atmosphere better so that we will support, perhaps, the Olympics in 2008 -the vote comes up in July - that permanent normal trading relations will go through. The Chinese need to create a better atmosphere and I think they will do that.
Maple Shade, N.J.:
As the former Ambassador to China you probably know that Chinese seldom fight unless they are edged into a corner. So, during this standoff, what made the Chinese get mad?
James R. Lilley: I am not quite sure your historic statement is true about Chinese history. The Chinese get into an awful lot of fights without being in the corner. They fought with the Vietnamese in '79, they fought the Indians in 1962, they fought with the Russians in 1969, they fought in Korea in 1950, they sunk a Vietnamese ship off the Spratley (Islands) in 1978. When it gets on the edge of their territory they strike out. They are not in a corner; they do it for their so-called national power. So in this particular case they added it up. They came to the logical conclusion that this was becoming very counterproductive in the world. They didn't want to get into a long-term fight with the United States, they didn't want to effect investment, they wanted to keep the situation stable so they can develop their first priority, which is their economy. That's why they made the decision.
Alexandria, Va.:
Any chance the Chinese held onto the airmen so they'd have extra time to pick the plane apart?
James R. Lilley: I would say perhaps there is some truth to that. We saw the trucks out there probably unloading the consoles and things, but those consoles are really just radio recievers. They may have wanted to get that black box which one of your earlier questioners mentioned so they would not have the data which would reflect that the story they had was not true. And we may never see that unless they dither with it and it supports their story. But I would say that they held the pilots to see how many consesions they could get to us on language, on curtailing the flights, whatever they were looking for, and they weren't getting it, so they let them out.
washingtonpost.com:
Ambassador, thank you so much for coming online with us.
