The China Diary of George H. W. Bush

The Making of a Global President

Jeffrey A. Engel, Jeffrey Engel

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781400829613
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Available in print for the first time, this day-by-day diary of George H. W. Bush's life in China opens a fascinating window into one of the most formative periods of his career. As head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing from 1974 to 1975, Bush witnessed high-level policy deliberations and daily social interactions between the two Cold War superpowers. The China Diary of George H. W. Bush offers an intimate look at this fundamental period of international history, marks a monumental contribution to our understanding of U.S.-China relations, and sheds light on the ideals of a global president in the making.
In compelling words, Bush reveals a thoughtful and pragmatic realism that would guide him for decades to come. He considers the crisis of Vietnam, the difficulties of détente, and tensions in the Middle East, while lamenting the global decline in American power. He formulates views on the importance of international alliances and personal diplomacy, as he struggles to form meaningful relationships with China's top leaders. With a critical eye for detail, he depicts key political figures, including Gerald Ford, Donald Rumsfeld, Deng Xiaoping, and the ever-difficult Henry Kissinger. Throughout, Bush offers impressions of China and its people, describing his explorations of Beijing by bicycle, and his experiences with Chinese food, language lessons, and Ping-Pong.
Complete with a preface by George H. W. Bush, and an introduction and essay by Jeffrey Engel that place Bush's China experience in the broad context of his public career, The China Diary of George H. W. Bush offers an unmediated perspective on American diplomatic history, and explores a crucial period's impact on a future commander in chief.

CHAPTER ONE

“Everybody in the United States
Wants to Go to China”

October 21 to November 1, 1974

In late October 1974, George H. W. Bush flew to China. He left behind Washington and Watergate, seeking in what he termed this “important assignment” a means of rejuvenation after years spent amid political scandal. He got no further than Alaska, however, before Watergate reared its ugly head. Investigators tracked him down by phone during a scheduled layover to pose further questions about his role in President Richard Nixon’s political machinations. The brief incident set the tone for Bush’s first weeks in China, where he threw himself into his new environment as though eager to occupy his mind to the point of exhaustion, leaving little time or mental space to ponder all he had left behind. Jet lag only added to this state of exhaustion. It was during these initial weeks in Beijing that Bush met his staff and the prominent members of Beijing’s diplomatic community, including Ambassadors Bryce Harland, Stephen Fitzgerald, and Sir Edward Youde, of New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, respectively. These diplomats would become his closest confidants and in many ways his tutors in understanding his Chinese hosts. He also met the Oxford-educated Richard Akwei, a Ghanaian diplomat who would become his most frequent tennis partner over the ensuing months.

Bush also made the rounds on the Chinese side. Determined to “meet the next generation of China’s leaders—whomever they may prove to be,” he pushed for State Department permission to attend national day celebrations at the various embassies and consulates scattered throughout Beijing. Ambassador David Bruce, Bush’s predecessor as head of the United States Liaison Office, had been strictly denied this privilege by the State Department. Officially, Washington objected to American attendance at such events as a matter of protocol. Bush—as only an American representative in Beijing, not officially an ambassador—would be shunted to the side of any formal ceremony, in which official delegates from even the smallest countries would be recognized before him. It would be unseemly for the United States to be treated in such a way, argued deputies to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Yet their real objection to American attendance lay in their desire to control nearly every interaction between American officials and their Chinese counterparts. These receptions would provide opportunities to mingle among the city’s diplomatic community, Bush argued, as well as a chance to get to know the men and women who ran Beijing’s government in an informal setting. But these were exactly the sort of unscripted conversations and meetings the professional diplomats at the State Department wanted Bush to avoid at all cost.

Though his diary is modest on this point, recently declassified documents, highlighted in the notes to this chapter, reveal that Bush did not so much ask for permission to make this symbolically important change as make the decision unilaterally. Determined to meet China’s leading players despite Foggy Bottom’s objections, he plunged into Beijing’s diplomatic community with gusto. He thus spent his first weeks in Beijing working to exhaustion, exploring the city, and meeting every important Chinese official and foreign diplomat he could. This first section of the diary includes descriptions of Bush’s first meetings in China with Qiao Guanhua, who would in a few weeks be named China’s foreign minister, and with Deng Xiaoping, China’s future leader, then embroiled in a power struggle that would determine the country’s leadership and indeed its very course. He also encountered for the first time the sort of official Chinese reluctance that would come to infuriate him. In the end, his first weeks in China provided exactly what he sought: opportunity, adventure, and a job far from Washington.

This is the beginning of the Peking Diary.¹

[Monday,] October 21, 1974. Japan Air Lines. Flight that went to Osaka, [and] Shanghai, [from] Tokyo. Just completed three days at the Tokyo Embassy with Jim and Marie Hodgson.² Extremely hospitable and generous in every way. A delightful, down-to-earth guy—plucked out of one year back at Lockheed to be a business-presence ambassador along the lines of the highly successful Bob Ingersoll.³ I think he will do well.

My emotions are mixed about this. I read the Japan Times. I begin already to wish I had more details on American politics, the elections. You read the tired AP [Associated Press] replay, some of the same stories we saw in the states before we left.

When we got to Anchorage there was a message for me to call Leon Jaworski.⁴ After countless details and fumbling around by Washington [telephone] operators, Ben Venisti and James Neal came on the telephone.⁵ They explained that Jaworski had placed the call but had gone home. I expect that this was true though I am not totally confident. They were asking me about a conversation on tape in April 1973. They had not heard the tape but they saw a transcript.⁶ In it, Richard Moore apparently told President Nixon that I had been approached by Mardian to raise $30,000 for the Watergate defendants, and that Moore told the President that I refused to do this and had urged the whole thing to come out.⁷ They were asking me my recollection. I told them that I had absolutely no recollection of this; that I was confident I had not talked to Mardian about this; that I hadn’t seen him since I had become national chairman.⁸ Indeed I hadn’t seen him since perhaps a year before that and then only in passing. All in all I thought they were on the wrong track. They told me that Moore had not been cooperative. This, when I said they ought to get Moore in and ask him about the conversation. I told them I would look at my notes and try to recall any conversation. I did remember some vague reference by Anna Chennault to “another project” where Anna came to me trying to build her Republican credentials.⁹ And I put two and two together and figured this might have had something to do with raising money for defendants. But I don’t recall that it was in April. And I had not in any way tied it in with Dick Moore.

The incident itself is not important except that here I was leaving the United States, last point of land, and a call out of the ugly past wondering about something having to do with Watergate, cover-up, and all those matters that I want to leave behind.

In going to China I am asking myself, “Am I running away from something?” “Am I leaving what with inflation, incivility in the press and Watergate and all the ugliness?” “Am I taking the easy way out?” The answer I think is “no,” because of the intrigue and fascination that is China. I think it is an important assignment; it is what I want to do; it is what I told the President [Gerald Ford] I want to do; and all in all, in spite of the great warnings of isolation, I think it is right—at least for now.

General Notes. People at the State Department seem scared to death about our China policy. Kissinger keeps the cards so close to his chest that able officers in EA [State Department Bureau of East Asian Affairs] seem unwilling to take any kinds of initiative. This troubles me a little bit because I worry that our policy is “plateaued out,” and that if we don’t do something the policy will come under the microscopic scrutiny the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] has come under, [and] that the Middle East policy has come under.¹⁰ And indeed the American people are going to be looking for forward motion. And it is my hope that I will be able to meet the next generation of China’s leaders—whomever they may prove to be. Yet everyone tells me that that is impossible. I have the feeling that David Bruce felt it was best to have a small mission, keep a very low profile, do [a] little reporting, and to feel his way along on this new relationship.¹¹ He was revered—properly so—and respected. But my hyper-adrenaline, political instincts tell me that the fun of this job is going to be to try to do more, make more contacts. Although everyone all along the line says that you will be frustrated; won’t be able to make contacts; won’t be able to meet people; they will never come see you, etc. etc. I fear this may be true, but the fun will be trying.

I understand that we are walking into a situation where morale is a little low. Time will tell you this as well. I am looking forward to Jennifer Fitzgerald coming over to be my secretary.¹² I think there is a lot to be said to having a buffer between the State Department and the ambassador. It worked at the UN and I am satisfied it can work here.

Before I left, briefings at Commerce, Agriculture and Defense all resulted in requests for a presence from their department there. Military attaché which would include three or four people. Agricultural attaché and commerce attaché. EA seems opposed to this. My own judgment right now is that maybe we ought to have an agricultural man, but again I will have a better judgment on this when I get there.¹³ Eighty or ninety percent of our commerce is agriculture. Our trade is going to fall dramatically off this year from a high of close to a billion dollars to around $500 million. This is going to be viewed by the American people as going backwards in trade, and I think we need some work to see that we keep it up.

The question of newsmen in China concerns me. I can see where they [the State Department] don’t want every controversial Lyndon-type negativist rushing around, criticizing. But I also can see that responsible reporting perhaps by the news agencies, AP [Associated Press] and UPI [United Press International], might be the best possible thing right now. China should not be on the front burner. But if the policy is going to move forward, nor should it be on the back burner, in terms of awareness in the U.S. The Kissinger trip can help on this enormously.¹⁴

Random Recollections. Everybody in the United States wants to go to China.¹⁵ Everyone wants a visa. The professors don’t know a hell of a lot more about what’s going to happen in China than the politicians or the military. Going-away reception at Huang Hua’s; a dinner at Huang Zhen’s; the UN dinner; our lunch for Huang Zhen; Stewart’s Supreme Court dinner to which Huang Zhen was invited—all were very good.¹⁶ Huang Zhen was rather expansive, suggesting that we could have visas for those people who were “friends of Ambassador Bush.” He started suggesting that many, many people could come to China on this basis, all of which I hope proves to be true. It would seem to me that if we had interesting people perhaps we could use this as a way to have more contact with our Chinese friends. Nick Platt, who was let out of China because of hitting a person on a bicycle, and his wife Sheila came to see us in Tokyo at the embassy.¹⁷ They are stationed there. They indicated that there was a lot to be done in terms of the happiness of the American families, the boredom aspect. They felt that the ambassador should be more active, should push for more contact, should not be quite so subservient or take a lot of stuff off the Chinese.¹⁸

We were wondering what shape Fred will be in when we arrive in China.¹⁹ He has been in Japanese quarantine for three days and there seemed to be some confusion at the Japanese airport as to whether he was on the plane. But we are assured that he is safely in the bowels of this JAL [Japan Airlines] DC-8.²⁰ Though I couldn’t hear him barking at Osaka. The weather in Tokyo is humid and fairly warm. A reasonably heavy gray flannel suit was too much. We had a delightful visit on Sunday down at Kamakura with John Roderick of the AP who showed me fascinating pictures that he had taken in Tiananmen with Zhou Enlai, Chairman Mao, Huang Hua and others.²¹ Roderick was from Maine. A decent man whom I had met years before with Joy down at the Kennebunk River Club though I did not recall it.²² He is fascinated with China and wants to go there as the AP man. He is sensitive to the problems and I do not think would cause difficulties for the United States or China in his reporting. Because of the great sensitivity in China it is important to have seasoned journalists when the door is opened. I would hate to spend all my time trying to explain that adverse stories could not be controlled by us. Miss Hollingsworth, a British reporter, told us some experience she had had of being called in to explain some of her writings.²³ This concept is alien to our country.

Note. I read in the Japan papers some comment about the threats to the freedom of U.S. journalists and I thought to myself, “My God, what are they talking about,” compared to what happens in terms of reporting in China.

Note. I will ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface by George H. W. Bush
• Introduction: Bush’s China Diary—What You Are About to Read
• Acknowledgments
• Cast of Primary Characters
• Chapter One: “Everybody in the United States Wants to Go to China” October 21 to November 1, 1974
• Chapter Two: “Public Posture versus Private Understanding” November 2 to November 21, 1974
• Chapter Three: “We Must Not Capitulate on Matters This Fundamental” November 22, 1974, to January 15, 1975
• Chapter Four: “Much of the World Depends on the United States” February 6 to March 9, 1975
• Chapter Five: “When It Is a Matter of Principle It Really Means Do It Their Way” March 10 to April 15, 1975
• Chapter Six: “We Do Have Principles and It Is Time We Stood Up for Them” April 16 to June 2, 1975
• Chapter Seven: “There Is No Credit in This Work” June 3 to July 4, 1975
• Chapter Eight: “I Have Studied Chinese” July 5 to August 22, 1975
• Bush in China: The Making of a Global President
• Notes
• An Essay on Sources
• Index
• Photographs follow page