Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

James Green: Welcome to the U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast from Georgetown University.

This podcast series explores diplomacy and dialogue between China and the United States during the four decades since normalization of relations in 1979. We'll hear from former ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, and White House advisors -- who will share how they shaped the course of the most complex relationship in international diplomacy today.

I'm your host, James Green.

Today on the podcast, we talk to Ambassador John Negroponte.

Only a handful of U.S. officials have interacted with Chinese leaders before the two countries established official diplomatic relations. John Negroponte was one of those people. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service at the end of the Eisenhower Administration and quickly began working on Asia, first assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, then, as the war heated up in Southeast Asia, to Saigon. As a junior officer in South Vietnam, Negroponte mastered the language and the politics of the place, which gave him the opportunity to show around a young Harvard Professor named Henry Kissinger.

Then, as an expert on U.S. policy towards Vietnam during the height of the war in the early 1970s, John Negroponte was pulled into the White House to work with Kissinger on the secret Paris Peace talks where the U.S. was negotiating with North Vietnam. At the conclusion of those talks, President Nixon announced:

Richard Nixon (audio): “Good evening, I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia. The following statement is being issued at this moment in Washington and Hanoi: At 12:30 Paris time today, January 23, 1973, the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was initialed by Dr. Henry Kissinger on behalf of the United States, and Special Adviser Le Duc Tho on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.”

James Green: Nixon was convinced that a critical component for peace in Vietnam was the geo-strategic realignment that came from his breakthrough visit to China in February 1972. By driving a wedge between the Soviets and their one-time Communist allies in China, Nixon and Kissinger thought the Soviets' position in the world would be greatly weakened. That diplomatic coup set the stage for a decade and a half of U.S.-China coordination against the Soviet Union.

During this early period of warming ties between the U.S. and China, John Negroponte was so central to U.S. policy on the Vietnam War that he was asked to accompany President Nixon to Moscow for his famous summit with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhev in May 1972 to explain to the Soviets the status of U.S. involvement in Indochina.

Fast forward three and a half decades, after several ambassadorships and becoming the first Director of National Intelligence following the 9/11 attacks, and John Negroponte was again back at the State Department working on Asia, this time as the #2.

Today, John Negroponte and I discuss his decades of interacting with Chinese officials, starting with his deployment in Hong Kong watching the famine across the border in Mainland China to his meetings with senior Chinese officials on the eve of the 2008 Financial Crisis, which began to upend the global international order.

John Negroponte: The challenge, substantively, as I recall it, was, getting a good grasp on what was going on inside of China. We didn't have good intel, we didn't have satellite technology that could tell us whether or not there was a famine or not, which was one of the issues of debate at the time.

So we had the basement of the British American Tobacco building, where we had a group of translators, and we bought every mainland Chinese newspaper we could get our hands on, we brought in and had them translated and sifted and searched for relevant information. We also had a program to interview refugees who could give us insights into conditions there. But, there was-

James Green: These were people who had left China-

John Negroponte : Correct.

James Green: ... presumably for political and/or economic, financial reasons?

John Negroponte: Well, yeah, I would say most, if you look at, many if not most were economic refugees. And if you look at the history of housing in Hong Kong, at first these people were all in shanty houses along the sides of the hills and everything, it was a real eyesore back in the '50s. And then the Hong Kong government started a pretty systematic program to give refugees proper housing. And some of that housing is still there, you can see it. But it took a long time to put a dent into the housing needs of the refugee population.

And, of course, inherently Hong Kong has always had refugees, it was just a question of how many at any, what the flow was at any particular time.

James Green: So you mentioned the famine that was going on then, and how difficult it was to get a window on what was happening in China. But the communists had just taken power a decade and change beforehand.

John Negroponte : Correct.

James Green: What was the feeling as to what was going on? I mean, clearly there was, some social turmoil that was happening during the Great Leap Forward in this time.

John Negroponte : Right.

James Green: But did you have a sense at that moment that there was widespread famine, or really difficulties within society?

John Negroponte : Um ... yes. Now, bear in mind at that time I was neither, you know, I wasn't somebody who was, whose job it was to follow what was going on in China. I was also a junior officer. I arrived in Hong Kong in January of 1961, I was not even 22 years old yet. So, you know, my experience was fairly limited (laughs). But, I guess I absorbed things pretty quickly and, I could hear the debate. I attended a couple of meetings and the Consul General's staff meetings when they were debating whether or not there was a famine.

But yeah, I mean, the feeling was that this is an impoverished country struggling for its existence. I think there was. What I was more aware of at the time ... I was sure there was a famine going on, I don't think I had any doubt in my mind. What I was equally or more aware of was the discussions that we were having at the Consulate General about the Sino-Soviet split. And I can remember Heyward Isham, who was one of our political officers there, he's since passed away unfortunately. But Heyward wrote a seminal cable in about, sometime in 1962, based on some article he'd read in a newspaper or an editorial, which his conclusion from analyzing the article was this represents an irrevocable split between China and the Soviet Union. And a day or so later, Herb Levin and I met with one of the guys from the CIA station there. And he said, "Who's this guy Isham?" you know, "He's got rocks in his head, I mean how can he, how can he think there's a Sino-Soviet split?"

Well, it's fascinating, because in retrospect and in my career, especially when I took over the Director of National Intelligence, I kind of cite the decade of the 1960s as one of where LB Jay and Dean Rusk, perpetrated an enormous intelligence failure by insufficiently appreciating the significance of the Sino-Soviet split. They were so fixated with the idea of a monolithic communist movement that they could not fit these new emerging facts into their worldview. And it turned out to be, it became a very important problem.

So, you know, when people say, you know, an intelligence failure because you failed to pick up this little bit of information or that. Here was a real strategic intelligence failure, in my view, where we just didn't factor in sufficiently what we actually knew about the Sino-Soviet split into our policy making and it took the advent of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to do that. But that's a decade later!

James Green: So that ... Yeah

John Negroponte : Or, eh, seven or eight years later, yeah.

James Green: The mindset was so fixed at that moment that the Soviet and communist menace was one block that the idea that there were-

John Negroponte : Correct.

James Green: ... different fissures within that block just didn't fit into-

John Negroponte: No way. No way.

James Green: ... U.S. policy makers or senior leaders.

John Negroponte : Well, and Rusk you know was, Rusk, of all of them in that team there, was very ideological. Or much more ideological than the others, more so than McNamara or Johnson himself.

James Green: So that was Hong Kong and a fascinating time to be there and has changed fair amounts since then. I think one of your farewell tours as Deputy Secretary of State.

John Negroponte : Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Green: ... took you to Hong Kong-

John Negroponte : Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Green: ... it must have been about 2000s, 2008 maybe.

John Negroponte : It was right during the beginning, it's when Bear Stearns went out, or Lehman Brothers, one of them.

And I can remember standing up there on the eve of the great global financial crisis in a press conference saying, "The fundamentals are solid." (laughs) So much for economic forecasting (laughs).

James Green: The fundamentals from Hong Kong were still pretty good, it's still a great place to visit and it-

John Negroponte : (laughs) That's right.

James Green: ... their economy seems to be doing okay.

John Negroponte : (laughs)

James Green: But, fascinating. I wanted to move on to your time working on the Vietnam war-

John Negroponte : Yeah.

James Green: ... ‑ and the China part of that. I recall when you were Deputy Secretary of State, first, I was working in policy and planning and Steve Krasner, who was head of Policy and Planning-

John Negroponte : Right, right.

James Green: ... said, "Oh my gosh, Ambassador Negroponte, what job hasn't he had? He's just done everything in the foreign service, he seems to be-

John Negroponte : Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Green: ...so plugged in so many aspects of policy." But I remember the Chinese gave you, and then I'm gonna ask about the back story, was they gave you this photograph of you shaking hands with Zhou Enlai.

John Negroponte : Correct.

James Green: And first it showed that on the Chinese side they have very long memories and their system is one that is able to kind of take these photographs and keep them hidden. And I remember what they said when they gave it to you, which was ... It's a wonderful photograph.

John Negroponte : Yeah.

James Green: And it's you shaking hands and you're wearing, as I recall, a very nice white ... beautiful white suit that, in 1972-

John Negroponte: I'll show it to you. I'll show you the picture afterwards (laughs).

James Green: And so, but what they said was, you know, "The optics were wrong so we never published it. Because you're a tall person and Zhou Enlai was not a tall person."

John Negroponte : Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Green: And the optics were, you're kind of putting your hand down to shake Zhou Enlai's hand and you're both smiling. It's a very pleasant photo, but they said the height optics were so bad that they could never release it to the public. That would show the U.S. was dominating in a much bigger country and so we couldn't do that. But we saved this photo in our archives and now that you're back in government we're giving this to you-

John Negroponte : That's right.

James Green: ... to show you that we recognize that you've worked on, on U.S./China relations in some way in your previous career.

John Negroponte : That was from Xinhua's file, Xinhua News Agency, yeah.

Amazing that, how good their filing system was, considering (laughs)-

James Green: Incredible.

John Negroponte : ... back then they had no technology (laughs).

James Green: Exactly. I mean, it's a one thing you can say about the communists is they do keep records and they know how to access them.

So I wanted, that's a kind of back end way of getting into your involvement in working on the Vietnam war and the Paris Peace Process. Um, we can get to the Zhou Enlai meeting specifically, but just maybe for folks who didn't follow your career-

John Negroponte : Right.

James Green: ... you had served in Vietnam and then you went to work at the National Security Council on the Vietnam War. Could you just talk a little bit about that aspect.

John Negroponte: Well, after I left Hong Kong, I came back and I worked in the Bureau of African Affairs, in State. And I had an administrative job and frankly, to put it simply, I couldn't stand it. I mean, it was just not my cup of tea and so I went to my personnel officer and he said, "Well, you know, we can't get you into another assignment until the next assignment cycle a year from now." And I said, "Oh my God." And then he calls me a few weeks later and said, "How would you like to study Vietnamese? 'Cause we're, you know, plussing up our staff at Saigon and things are hotting up out there."

So long story short I took 44 weeks of Vietnamese language training, became a Vietnamese Language Officer so to speak. I became fairly proficient in Vietnamese and went out to the political section in Saigon where I met when I was a provincial reporting officer and covered a bunch of provinces in, the northern tier of the country, I met professor Kissinger, because he came out as a consultant for ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, and I took him around to several of the provinces and went to several of the meetings. Oh, about a half dozen of us had the pleasure of taking Henry around to various parts of the country.

So that's how we got to know each other.

James Green: Sorry, this was which year?

John Negroponte : This is '65. I mean, I was in Saigon '64 to '68 and I met Doctor Kissinger in '65. And in '65 and '66 I took him around various parts of the country. Um, on each of his trips. He was a consultant for ambassador Lodge.

Um, so then I exhausted myself in Saigon, I worked really hard, and I wanted to get away from Vietnam. And I got an assignment to the United, our delegation of the United Nations, but this is '68 now. And then the announcement comes about peace talks happening in Paris and the next thing I know Richard Holbrooke, who was on the delegation, and mister Habib, Phil Habib, the ranking U.S. Diplomat on the delegation, asked Dick to help him pull the team together and they called me up. And long story short, I became the liaison officer to the North Vietnamese delegation and my assignment to the UN, U.S. UN was, broken (laughs).

James Green: And what did you do as the liaison officer?

John Negroponte : So the story of my career at that time was one of constantly trying to get away from my Vietnam expertise and experience and not being able to do so.

Well, I was responsible for a lot of stuff. I mean, first of all very literally liaising with the North Vietnamese delegation. I probably met with the North Vietnamese more than just about anybody else, 'cause I had to go out back and forth, pass messages, arrange meetings, like secret meetings when we were having those. Anything that had to do with our contact with them I was involved in.

Secondly I was involved with keeping the records of the negotiations, both plenary and secret, and, work very closely with the Mr. Habib, the senior state department guy there plus the two heads of the delegation, which were ... who were, Averell Harriman, governor Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, who at that time was a, I believe, a Deputy Secretary of Defense, but who later on became, of course, Secretary of State.

So, I stayed in the Paris Peace talks from their beginning, May of '68, through till the summer of '69. Went off to sort of like an academic year off, like a sabbatical and lo and behold, I get called. I'm supposed to go to Geneva again for a UN-like assignment, sort of a disarmament, committee on disarmament. And I even get there, I start the assignment and I do it for a few weeks, and then doctor Kissinger calls-

James Green: So you actually got to Geneva.

John Negroponte : I got to Geneva spent the summer session there, September rolls around then doctor Kissinger, asked the state department to send me over to work for him. And I start, I did. I was determined to refuse, but when I got into his office, (laughs) a kinda funny thing happened. I was waiting in the, you know, at the West wing there, I was waiting outside the NSC office there and Kissinger bursts out of the front into the hallway with Cyrus Vance. And Kissinger said, "Oh, there's Negroponte. I'm going to hire him so he can retire, he can resign from the White House in protest." Because I, he was trying to fill slots that had come up as a result of the Cambodia invasion where Tony Lake and Richard Moose and I think a total of five people had quit the NSC. And so I was, (laughs) ... Roger Morris I think. So, I was one of the ones, who was gonna replace these people.

And so I relented when that happened, my heart sank. Cause I had ... When Vance said, "Oh, you couldn't be getting a better guy."

John Negroponte : So I wish he hadn't said that (laughs).

So I ended up working for two and a half years for doctor Kissinger. That job was probably the hardest job I ever had in my life.

James Green: That's saying a lot, you've had a lot of jobs.

John Negroponte: The hardest job I ever had in my diplomatic career. I was the director for Vietnam, we did not, you know ... In those days we didn't have these monster staffs that people have today. Um, I was following Vietnam generally, I was following the peace, you know, the peace process, I mean, anything to do with the civilian aspects of the conflict. And of course I even had an input in the military side, because, you know, I knew a bit about the country. And sometimes Henry wanted a second opinion, he'd get, the military would say this or that and he'd then say, "Well John, what do you think?"

I mean, I even wrote a, sort of, a basic paper for him on, you know, the pros and cons and ways of doing a ceasefire, things like that.

James Green: Wow.

John Negroponte : But, so I had the whole portfolio for Vietnam with a staff of two other officers (laughs). Three of us. Which in today's, I mean, that would seem ridiculous today.

James Green: At a time when we were very involved in the country-

John Negroponte : Oh, deeply.

James Green: ... and we had a huge diplomatic and military staff there.

John Negroponte : And the NSC was basically driving the policy, because of Henry Kissinger's way of doing business, which was basically to play everything very close to his vest and work very secretively between himself and Mr. Nixon and not many other people. Perhaps General Haig who at the time was his deputy.

So I did the staffing, I did some of the analyses and then I accompanied him on all his negotiations to Paris. And because Vietnam was such a big issue in our relationships with the world, he often took me to other places as well. So I went to Nixon's first summit with Brezhnev, the Moscow-

James Green: Wow.

John Negroponte : ... summit. We had a huge meeting on Vietnam, if you look at the history books, on Vietnam in Brezhnev's dacha. There were just four of us on the U.S. side: Henry, the president, Winston Lord, and myself.

James Green: Wow.

John Negroponte : It was amazing. And then he took me to China in the wake of that Moscow summit in June of '72 to brief the Chinese on what had happened in Moscow. And that's when that photo was taken.

James Green: Wow.Brilliant. That's amazing.

John Negroponte: ... that you referred to of myself greeting Zhou Enlai.

James Green: Wow. That's fascinating. In the negotiations in the Paris Peace talks, it was a U.S.-Vietnam discussion. Where did China loom in your mind or in the Vietnamese, kind of, calculus as they were talking to you, and how did that, kinda, play in?

John Negroponte : Well, you got into a very interesting question here, because there are different actors in our, you know, foreign policy establishment who have quite different views about the ability of the Chinese and the Russians to influence things. And particularly the Russians. I think people thought of Russia as more influential than China, on the Vietnamese. The communist party affiliation was with the Moscow branch of the party. The Vietnamese were very uncomfortable with the Sino-Soviet split, they, it was like parents divorcing, they didn't like it.

James Green: And they stuck with the father or with one of the sides, or-

John Negroponte : Uh, well, they were more sympathetic.

James Green: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Negroponte : Uh, and I think they got more help, in terms of material assistance. But of course, China was the, you know, like, the Vietnamese would say, the lips and the teeth. I mean (laughs), when they ... And everything came across that border, other than what came by ship from the Soviet Union.

But I always thought we certainly exaggerated the Soviet ability to influence the Vietnamese and I'm not sure the Chinese had that much influence either. I think what they did, the most influential thing the Chinese, and perhaps the Russians, did was to finally, to persuade the Vietnamese to finally just sign the agreement with the Americans. Sign it. And if you read some of the secret tapes and stuff like that, you'll see that basically, what Kissinger was saying, and the Chinese finally understood it and got it, if you just sign the agreement and let us get out of there and then let history take its course. That was basically Kissinger's attitude. And it took a long time for the Vietnamese to come around to that point, but I think that was the diplomacy that occurred from the Moscow summit forward until the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January of 1973.

James Green: Was to get the Vietnamese to-

John Negroponte : To agree to sign a piece of paper-

James Green: ... put their name-

John Negroponte: ... so that we could start the clock running on our withdrawal. After all, all it was a withdrawal agreement, they were, their troops were left inside the ... they had ten divisions in South Vietnam, there wasn't any commitment at all for them to withdraw from there. It was a leopard-spot ceasefire, the most unstable of possible ceasefires.

But I, you know, did the Chinese have day to day influence on the Vietnamese negotiating behavior? I doubt it. Did they have a cordial relationship with the Vietnamese leadership? I suppose so. But you know Zhou, I remember that conversation that took place during that, when that picture was taken and he said, you know, "We don't help them because we really like to, we help them because, we feel we have to."

James Green: Hm. That's fascinating.

John Negroponte : "We don't feel we have a choice." And don't forget, it was the Chinese and the Russians who persuaded them to agree to a divided Vietnam in 1954. Particularly the Russians.

So, you know, Vietnamese after that experience, they were really pretty independent minded and didn't, put, place much trust in other interlocutors.

In fact, I think ultimately they ended up trusting us more (laughs).

James Green: That's depressing.

John Negroponte : To today (laughs).

James Green: Um, wow. Fascinating. Um, so on your time just on the Philippines and, at the UN, where did China loom in those two ambassadorships for you, in the Philippines in the early '90s, ally of the United States? Uh, but I'm just kind of curious, what was the view of China from that perspective, from Manila in the early '90s, and then moving to the UN?

John Negroponte : Right. I don't remember that China was viewed in any, um ... in any light the similar to what it is today. Although, they did, while I was there, and I think it was in 1994, occupy Mischief Reef and so there was a momentary blip there in the relationship, but I remember going over to president Ramos's war room and Hank Hendrickson, my political counselor, and I were there and ...

James Green: Wow.

John Negroponte : They were very, you know, concerned about what to do about that. But China didn't loom large the way it does now, they hadn't yet attained the level of economic and political strength that they've got today. So I would say it was fairly ... a fairly normal relationship. I mean, Filipinos have always believed in universal diplomatic recognition, I mean, they've had relations with, Qaddafi, with the Russians, with the Chinese, with us, even though we're allies, and stuff like that. Yeah, there's no ...

James Green: Uh, and for the ethnic Chinese that were in the Philippines? I know in other parts of Southeast Asia, not at this moment of the '90s but earlier, in the '50s and '60s, the relationship between-

John Negroponte : Well, and there were some issues later on too in the '90s, weren't there, in Indonesia. I mean, the Chinese community in Indonesia has had a lot of issues over time. The Chinese community in the Philippines, I mean, this is a centuries old phenomenon and I think it's been one heck of a lot of assimilation. I mean, you look at Filipinos and, I mean, Marcos, all these people, I mean there's a lot of, there's obviously a lot of Chinese, intermarriage when those people came and settled, they were, I mean, in Vietnamese the word for Chinese is boat person.

James Green: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Negroponte : Uh, these are people who arrived by boat from this faraway place and then they ... (laughs)

So I don't think there was that much discrimination or anything against the Chinese.

James Green: It was not a big issue in, kind of-

John Negroponte : No.

James Green: ... the way the Filipinos saw themselves or dealt at that point.

John Negroponte : I don't think so. There is a Chinatown and Chinese community, but it's not ... it's not a ... I didn't feel in the Philippines it was a big deal.

James Green: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Awesome.

So onto the United Nations in 2000-

John Negroponte : '01 to '04.

James Green: Yeah. Uh, the U.S. I remember I was working on the China desk at the time at main state and I remember at one point the Chinese ambassador came in and told, it must have been Deputy Secretary Armitage, he said, "You know, we're not fans of Saddam. You guys do what you need to do in Iraq." But in the run-up to Iraq I just wanted to ask China's on the security council, an important member of the security council, what was your experience in New York dealing with a lot of different countries in the run-up to the Iraq war? Where did China figure into that, kind of, constellation?

John Negroponte : I'm trying to remember whether they ever even exercised the veto once. I mean, I-

James Green: During your time as ambassador.

John Negroponte : Yeah, right.

James Green: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Negroponte : Well, and if you look over time, I mean, they, compared to us or the Russians, they've hardly exercised the veto at all. But, the Chinese are very conservative when it comes to the way they carry out their policies towards the UN. They're very careful, they're methodical, they follow very closely of course, you can always count on them to be very well informed. All those people taking notes, they know the brief, there's no question about it. But, you know, to borrow a phrase, a term from the Middle East, you know, when we talk about the Shi'a clerics we say they are either for, sort of, clerical rule or they're quietists. I think the Chinese were sort of quietists in the ... in the UN security council. They held back. They always hold back and they don't want, they didn't wanna take a lead, they didn't aspire to that. They tended to try and stay aligned with the Russians to the extent that they could. But, I can't recall any time when they were out in the forefront against us somehow. It was always behind somebody else's cover if there was something going on. Like even on the Iraq war and the run-up to Iraq, yeah, they weren't the ones who were, you know, crying from the rooftops.

James Green: Those were our allies, right?

John Negroponte : It was the Germans and the French (laughs). Well, and the Russians to a certain point, right. So, I mean, I found them quite easy to work with. I went down ... I frequently went down and met with them at their delegation or in the UN building. They were friendly. Um, I've always enjoyed my dealings with Chinese diplomats. I find them reliable, consistent, they don't chop and change, and they're very pleasant to talk to. So, um they're professional, they're very professional. They really are.

James Green: Serious professional, how does that compare with others? Again, your time with the UN and having served in so many different ambassadorial positions.

John Negroponte : Well, everyone has their own style. I think by and large the countries that I've served in and with have pretty good professional diplomatic corps, diplomatic services, including the Russians. I mean, you can't say.

I mean, Sergey Lavrov had been, in New York for about ten or I don't know how many years before he went to be Foreign Minister. But, he knew every resolution, he remembered all the history of all the debates. I mean, he is sort of a genius, and has this kinda incredible memory of everything that's happened. Um, but China now, I like the word quietist.

James Green: That's a very good phrase.

John Negroponte : Yeah.

James Green: Um, could I ask, just stepping back a little bit from when China joined the UN in 1971 over U.S. objections, at that time, were you at the NSC, is that right?

John Negroponte: You mean when they were voted, their credentials were accepted instead of Taiwan's?

James Green: That's right, yeah, at the General Assembly.

John Negroponte: Yeah, I was in Washington. I was at the NSC, but I, you know-

James Green: Wasn't-

John Negroponte: ... I barely paid attention.

James Green: (laughs) That's what I was gonna ask. Yeah, interesting.

John Negroponte: Yeah, I barely paid attention and, you know, it happened. Um, and I think thereproshma it would ... it made it easier to take the next steps towards, approaching China for doctor Kissinger and others.

James Green: Um, fascinating. So then you went off to the DNI and Iraq and DNI and then, came back to the Department of State to be-

John Negroponte: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Green: ... Deputy Secretary. Um, I wanted to ask you about your time with the Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo, and this structure called the Senior Dialogue, which was supposed to talk about a lot of global issues. And just, kind of, talk through, if you would, some impressions of talking to someone like Dai Bingguo. What was it like and how did the-

John Negroponte: Well, yeah-

James Green: ... conversation go?

John Negroponte: No, I know ... That was a wonderful responsibility, I was very pleased the secretary gave that to me. I don't recall exactly how many of these dialogue sessions I had with Dai Bingguo, but we would meet at least twice a year so I probably had four or five such meetings with him, both in the U.S. and in China. Um, and I found ... and usually we me for a couple of days, and I always found the meetings extremely interesting.

The Chinese put tremendous value on dialogue. I think some people would, would criticize and say that they think of it as a substitute for, you know, a results oriented diplomacy. I'm not sure I agree with that. I think with such, with a country with such a different background than ours, and different perspectives and history, it's probably good that Americans and Chinese sit down together and make a systematic effort to understand each other better and understand each other's perspectives.

So I always viewed it as, a really useful, experience. Our interests were more mostly ... You remember Bob, my predecessor. Robert Zoellick had, invented this phrase "responsible stakeholder." I think, you know, our approach was basically driven by explaining to the Chinese our view that they can't be a free rider. They get a lot of benefits from the global order that, that we have helped create and preserve, you know, international public goods, if you will, and that they really needed to pony up. That was, sort of, the basic proposition.

And, I think that message started to catch hold. I mean, we wanted to get them interested in peace keeping and the United Nations, we wanted a deal with, you know, piracy off the Horn of Africa. The Middle East, we talked a lot about the Middle East, particularly our concern about Iran and what, its nuclear program and what it was doing there. I think that's probably one of the countries on which we had more substantive disagreement than just about any other.

Um, so those, that was our agenda. As you said, you know, global issues and so forth. Environment, I can't recall discussing environment very much at that time. Of course, that became a big issue. Oh, foreign assistance. We wanted to get them to talk to us more about their approach towards foreign assistance, but we had great difficulty doing that. Uh, we just didn't get very far.

And we ... Another area where we didn't get as far as we would have liked was military to military talks. At that time they would sometimes assign a relevant junior person to join our talks. And whenever there was any, the slightest bit of tension between the two countries the first thing to get canceled was always the mil to mil discussions, which was sort of counter intuitive.

James Green: Right.

John Negroponte: And I think that's actually an element of our dialogue that has improved in recent years. I mean, the, I think the Chinese military are coming out of their shell and much more willing to talk. I think they had two issues: they didn't really particularly want to talk to us, they were just shy if you will and they're not used to dealing with ...internationally, and secondly I'm not sure they liked to talk to us in front of their civilian counterparts. Uh, so there's, you know, various-

James Green: External and internal-

John Negroponte: ... elements, yeah.

James Green: ... challenges.

John Negroponte: But that's changed since. And of course the Chinese had their steady ... You know, we'd have these meetings and we'd talk about ... (laughs) they wouldn't ... they had their obligatory issues that they had to raise, which in those days had to do with Tibet and the Dalai Lama, Taiwan. We just went over and over that stuff. And I can remember sometimes we'd go through a whole day of these meetings and then Dai would say, "Well then, now at dinner we have to, after dinner we have to, you know, have another meeting, a very special sort of a-

James Green: Small group, only the important people.

John Negroponte: That's right, small group. Yeah, right.

James Green: Yes.

John Negroponte: And we'd sit down and (laughs) it would be Taiwan (laughs) and Tibet all over again. So, I got pretty familiar with those, positions that they had.

James Green: I just now wanted to close by asking, you've spent a lot of time dealing with Chinese diplomats, diplomats from a lot of different countries, what do you think works in negotiating with China and sitting down with Chinese officials? How can you take those 40 plus years of dealing with a lot of different countries? And, kind of, think about we're dealing with a stronger China than certainly 1961, but in some ways their negotiating behavior hasn't really changed that much, still stuck in a Marxist-Leninist way of thinking and seeing the world, and a bureaucracy that's quite, tied in. But I wonder what, how you see, what lessons you've learned in interacting with Chinese officials over the years.

John Negroponte: Yeah. Well, I think, first of all, I mean, China needs to be taken seriously and Chinese diplomats, need to be taken seriously as well and I've always, tried to do that. I think you need, you know, when you're trying to bridge, between two cultures like ours and theirs, which are really significantly different, the language, the background, the history, everything, you need to make some extra effort to understand each other.

So I think there's that. And also remember the formula of, you know, negotiate half the time and then spend half the time trying to understand a little bit about each other's cultures. I've always felt I admire the Chinese for that technique and think it can be very helpful, you know. When you bring them all, they come all the way over here, 10 000 miles away, to visit our country, just don't lock them in a room at 8:30 in the morning and leave at 6 at night and, you know, just do wall to wall negotiating. So I think you have to make an effort to understand them.

On the substance of the issue as well, things have changed tremendously. They they're no longer the weakened, the weak power that has just emerged from a century of humiliation, they are now the second largest, and perhaps soon to be the largest, economy in the world. They have legitimate interests, they're one point two or three billion people. We have no choice but to take them seriously. They're gonna be the ... They will be the most important bilateral relationship we have for the foreseeable future.

So I do, I'm pleased that a lot of young people in America are studying Chinese and, when I go to Beijing and the embassy there now and you ask if you meet with the junior officers and say, "How many of you here speak Chinese?" Practically everybody raises their hands. This is good. More and more students go for a semester you know, abroad in China and stuff like that. These are all good things, but, they are adversaries in some respects, or they are rivals. And, that we have to get used to the fact that that part has changed, they're and they're more assertive. I don't think they're ... They're not shrinking violets. And on some issues I think they've been definitely too assertive. I think the South China Sea, I think if anything that one ...

30 years ago they would've cared more about what people think. And I think it now with respect to the South China Sea they've just said, "Devil take the hindmost," and they've just gone ahead and asserted themselves. And frankly I think mistakenly so. Certainly contrary to international law and they got this arbitral decision against them and yet they choose to completely disregard it. I think that's unfortunate.

James Green: You think that ill serves them and it also ill serves the region and the-

John Negroponte: Well, I don't-

James Green: ... the international system.

John Negroponte: ... really understand what the big deal is. I mean, you know, it's the South China Sea, it's not land, it's not, it's just one part of the globe and I don't know why they have to act as if it were a Chinese lake, which is what they're doing.

James Green: Deputy Secretary Negroponte, thanks so much for-

John Negroponte: No, thanks-

James Green: ... all your time. Wonderful to hear all of your insights on-

John Negroponte: Yeah.

James Green: ... dealing with China. And as you say, it's a problem that's not going away, it's an issue that's gonna keep us engaged, for the years to come.

John Negroponte: Yeah, so I hope that Georgetown continues to keep engaged the way you do.

James Green: Ambassador John Negroponte - speaking with me from Washington, DC. You’ve been listening to the U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast from Georgetown University. I’m your host, James Green.