-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2000/12/27_3.html
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World Tibet Network News
Wednesday, December 27, 2000
3. The personal connection between China, Bush clan
by Jim Mann
Guest columnist
The Seattle Times, Wednesday, December 27, 2000
WASHINGTON, D.C. - How many nations can send to America an ambassador
who has been a personal friend of the Bush family for nearly a
quarter-century?
Even America's closest allies, such as Britain, Japan and Israel, can't
manage to do that.
But China can - and will.
Early next year, Beijing will dispatch to Washington a new envoy known
to most people as Yang Jiechi, China's smart and polished vice foreign
minister.
But to the Bushes, and to family associates such as former Secretary of
State James A. Baker III, he is better known as "Tiger" Yang - a
nickname derived when, as a young man fresh from the London School of
Economics, he served as host for the senior George Bush and his friends
on a
groundbreaking, private journey to Tibet in 1977.
"(Yang) was with us the whole time," James Lilley, who was on that trip
and later served as Bush's ambassador to Beijing, recalled in a 1996
interview. "We hit it off with him right away."
At several sensitive junctures over the past two decades, including the
aftermath of China's Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, the man they
call Tiger has emerged as a hidden liaison between the Bushes and the
Chinese leadership.
The story of China's soon-to-be ambassador should serve as a caution to
anyone who predicts - based merely on President-elect George W. Bush's
campaign description of China as a "strategic competitor" - that the new
administration is headed for a confrontation with Beijing.
Perhaps that will be true. But it's far from certain. Those who focus
only on the prickly relationship between America and China of the past
decade forget that there also remains a legacy of personal ties from the
1970s and 1980s, when Washington and Beijing were tacit allies against
the Soviet Union.
With America and China, sometimes foreign policy boils down to history,
and history boils down to biography. Here, then, is the little-known
tale of Tiger Yang and the Bushes.
In 1977, after Jimmy Carter was elected president, the senior George
Bush lost his job as CIA director. He had previously served in 1974-75
as head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing.
The Chinese government invited Bush to visit China with a large
delegation, including Baker, Lilley and Chase Untermeyer, the family
friend who first began working for the elder Bush when he ran for
Congress in 1966.
Bush already had quietly informed the Chinese that he planned to run for
president in 1980. In Beijing, the delegation met with China's emerging
new leader, Deng Xiaoping. Bush also brought a Pennzoil executive with
him, and the Americans talked with Deng about prospects for developing
China's offshore oil industry.
The Chinese granted the Bush delegation what was then a rare privilege:
a tour of Tibet, which had been closed to Americans since 1949.
Officially, Yang was the interpreter on that 16-day journey. But he was
more than that: He was the one Chinese official who befriended the Bush
entourage. "Everybody liked him," Lilley recalled.
In the 23 years since then, Yang has risen through the ranks of the
Chinese government. He served as the interpreter for Deng when President
Reagan visited China in 1984. In recent years, he has been in charge of
the Chinese Foreign Ministry's ties with the Clinton administration. But
Yang has also played a further, special role in China's dealings with
the Bush family.
In late 1989, when President Bush sent his aides Brent Scowcroft and
Lawrence Eagleburger on a secret mission to Beijing to try to win the
freedom of Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi, Bush sent along Untermeyer, who
had grown especially close to Tiger Yang on the 1977 trip.
Untermeyer's mission was to deliver a personal message from the
president to Yang that, despite the tensions over the Tiananmen
bloodshed, Bush wanted to preserve the relationship that had developed
between Washington and Beijing over the previous two decades.
And in the summer of 1992, when China discovered that Bush was about to
open the way for Taiwan to buy F-16 warplanes, Beijing sent Yang to talk
with the president. Usually, dignitaries deliver their messages in the
West Wing. But Bush welcomed Yang in the White House residential
quarters, to which few diplomats have entree.
Personal ties go only so far. Despite Bush's secret 1989 message through
Untermeyer to Yang, China didn't allow the dissident to leave the
country for several more months. In 1992, Bush ultimately went ahead
with the Taiwan arms sale, despite Yang's appeals.
Still, the fact remains that with Yang arriving as ambassador, China
will be able to call upon what it calls guanxi - that is, personal
connections - to the Bush clan.
The signals already are flashing back and forth between China and the
incoming Bush Administration. A few days ago, Beijing privately sent
word it won't insist that Bush repeat word-for-word all the promises
made by President Clinton. The message: We won't be too tough, at least
at the start.
Jim Mann covers foreign policy for the Los Angeles Times.
End<{{{
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