The Secretary (27 page)

There was no mistake. The U.S. government always arrived in a big way, but this group
was monstrous. The United States and China were holding the Strategic and Economic
Dialogue, a yearly, somewhat unwieldy, diplomatic exercise between two world powers.
The S&ED was a two-day talkfest where anything and everything on which the two countries
collaborated was on the table, from climate change to logging, education exchange
programs, and China’s currency exchange rate. It was a way for China and the United
States to learn how to stay focused on everything they could agree on while working
out their differences. A version of the dialogue had taken place during the Bush administration,
but with Obama it became even more comprehensive.

Several hundred U.S. officials would be coming to town: every government agency, every
department, every senior official wanted in on the dialogue with America’s banker
and was eager to be in the room with the world’s next superpower. Even more than that,
they wanted airtime to prove their relevance in the most important bilateral relationship
their country had. Without it, the rest of the U.S. bureaucracy might think they were
dispensable, and furthermore, if the Chinese didn’t hear your voice in a room with
three hundred people and dozens of U.S. government agencies, you were irrelevant.
If the Chinese didn’t know you existed, then you were out of the game. The S&ED was
not just about tangible agreements but also about perception.

The United States had become obsessed with staying ahead of China. Nothing else seemed
to matter. Just under half of Americans
24
believed that China had already surpassed the United States as the world’s superpower,
or was at least well under way to do so. They looked at the numbers and saw an economy
still growing at a rate of 10 percent per year while theirs was sputtering along at
2 or 3 percent. Everything they bought at home seemed to be made in China. America
was being drained by war while China was buying up Africa. China was booming, and
the United States was going bust. It was the same middle-of-the-night anxiety that
had suburban parents in America scheming for ways to afford Mandarin lessons. But
the United States seemed fixated rather than motivated, a worry fueled by neurosis.
The figures were certainly a reality, but America seemed to be thinking itself into
further decline. Even Obama kept referring to China’s faster trains and newer airports.
The comparison was meant to entice Americans to buckle down and get to work, but it
often had the opposite, depressing effect. The United States had fretted about being
overtaken by Japan in the 1980s, and the Asian economic giant had eventually gone
bust. But this time, Americans were sure it was real—China was going to swallow them.

Although 63 percent of Chinese believed their country had already overtaken, or was
going to overtake, the United States as the world’s superpower,
25
they were ambivalent about having the spotlight on their country. The
Global Times
, a government-backed newspaper, published an editorial in reaction to one of Obama’s
speeches, accusing the United States of China bashing, a “strategy that intensifies
and exploits public fear of the unknown.”

The importance of the relationship between the two countries was perhaps best symbolized
by the size of the American embassy in Beijing—it was the largest in the world. Paul’s
first countdown meeting had taken place in a small auditorium with several dozen embassy
employees. But every minute of the day, another employee approached him to say they
should be included because they were a guide on one of the motorcade buses or in charge
of food for the teams that would await the delegations’ arrivals at the airport. So
he held his final countdown meeting in the embassy gymnasium, and two hundred people
attended. He ordered pizza for everybody. It lasted three hours. An entire team was
assigned to organizing the motorcade. Usually, details of who sat in which car or
which bus were included in the daily mini-schedules that each member of the delegation
received. But in this case, there were buses and buses and buses, and the list of
passengers was thirty-two pages long. Staple guns were brought in to handle the three
hundred schedules. Paul and his colleagues from the State Department and the Treasury
had planned everything down to the last detail. Their eager and meticulous Chinese
counterparts went even further: at two in the morning, they knocked on Paul’s door
to review the planning one more time, just in case.

Paul just kept plugging along on the details. Part of the job of advance officers
was to make sure that the form didn’t destroy the content. The two days of talks would
consist of one hundred hours of dialogue (a dream for the Chinese, who loved to dilute
substance in the fluff of meetings and make grand statements that revealed little).
But if Paul and his team rubbed their hosts the wrong way, demanding that four thousand
credentials be printed in a day or trampling all over the flower beds on their way
out, it would undo all the diplomatic efforts. In China, the form was almost more
important than the substance. The obsession with preserving face drove everyone’s
actions. It was a concept that combined reputation, honor, and pride, and the threshold
for losing face in China seemed higher than even in Arab societies. Paul also wanted
everything to be perfect and wanted to make sure the secretary and all the other U.S.
officials who were coming would look good, but for Americans small hiccups were not
experienced as collective national embarrassment.

And now weeks, no, months of preparations were being overshadowed by the
Cheonan
crisis. Hours of talks on every single issue of interest to China and the United
States had been planned, but the only topic anyone was interested in asking about
was tension on the Korean peninsula. Washington wanted Beijing to acknowledge what
had happened and scold Kim Jong Il, the “Dear Leader” in Pyongyang. All eyes were
on China. How would it perform in this international crisis? Was it indeed turning
into a responsible world power, telling off friends after bad behavior? Or would the
cult of face prevail?

*   *   *

The
Cheonan
sinking was an unprecedented event for this generation of Chinese leaders. They were
treading very carefully. Bellicose North Korea, a Soviet ally since 1948, became China’s
protégé during the Korean War in the early 1950s. The relationship was a legacy of
the Cold War: it perpetuated a proxy war between China and the United States and created
a balance of power. The United States military was still seven times larger than China’s,
but with its nuclear program and missile testing, Pyongyang was helping Beijing to
keep Washington on its toes.

Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first ruler, had been installed in the North after the
end of World War II by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Below the 38th parallel that divided
the country, the South was in the American camp. But in 1950, Kim decided he wanted
to unify the country under his command. He convinced China’s Mao Zedong that North
Korean troops would be able to march south of the 38th parallel that divided the country
and conquer it—so quickly, in fact, that the United States would have no time to send
troops to help its ally, Syngman Rhee, in Seoul even if it wanted to.

Mao started planning China’s entry into the Korean War before U.S. troops even got
close to the 38th parallel, just in case, although he entered the war only when the
Americans overreached.
26
Mao wanted to make sure North Korea wouldn’t fall; he wanted to prevent American
imperialism from becoming victorious, dizzy with success and in a position to threaten
China.
27
Mao also did it to mobilize public opinion in China and consolidate his own power
in a country emerging from civil war. Although tens of thousand of Chinese troops
died in the war, they fought the United States to a stalemate on the 38th parallel
and held on to North Korea. The Communist country emerged with its sense of national
pride and unity restored. Crucially, the Chinese were led to believe that the war
started because of America’s expansionist designs rather than an invasion launched
by their North Korean friends. Decades later, the narrative persisted: North Korea
was the underdog, America the imperialist hegemon.

Unlike the United States, which had some fifty formal military alliances and countless
programs of cooperation binding it to dozens of countries around the world, China’s
friends were strategic liabilities. Many of China’s friends were weak, like Nepal
and Cambodia; its closest allies were really client states, and rogue ones at that:
North Korea and Burma. Pyongyang was proving to be increasingly unpredictable and
capricious. The North Koreans saw China as their ATM, and though Beijing kept them
afloat with food and aid, North Korea was always trying to attract America’s attention,
pushing for direct talks with Washington while the United States insisted that any
negotiations with Pyongyang had to include the Chinese, the Japanese, and other world
players. The North Koreans just wanted a deal with America. The Chinese were relieved
that at least Burma seemed reliable, staying in their camp. China also had many business
partners, but its checkbook was meant for resources to feed its own growing economy—not
love.

*   *   *

Sitting on the tarmac in Shanghai, with dozens of planes ahead of us lined up for
takeoff, we settled into our seats for a long wait. SAM rarely, if ever, requested
special treatment. But the Chinese were not about to let the American secretary of
state bake in the midday sun in an aluminum tube, so we taxied to the head of the
line and took off for Beijing, where we landed two hours later to a hiccup that no
amount of planning by Paul and his team could have foreseen.

The DS agents and the traveling press corps were always first off the plane, through
the back door and down the stairs, giving Fred’s team time to take up their positions
on the ground and allowing the camera crew traveling with us, recording the secretary’s
every move, to be ready to film her waving hello as she came out of the front door
of the plane. During those few minutes, with Huma’s help, Hillary would freshen up
in her cabin, putting on the finishing touches to her attire.

But in Beijing, airport workers had trouble lining up the stairs with the front door
of the plane. The hydraulic lift didn’t seem to work. There was frantic yammering
in the walkie-talkies and running around. Chinese officials, impassive at first, stood
in line waiting to greet their VIP guest. Airport workers drove a second set of stairs
to the plane, but America’s plane and China’s steps just did not want to line up.
The Chinese officials were starting to fidget. This was an embarrassment to their
country. Third time lucky—the American ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, walked up
the steps and escorted the secretary down. As always, Fred emerged a few moments later,
followed by Huma, to make sure photographers could first get a clear shot of the secretary
as she walked down.

State Councilor Dai Bingguo hosted Clinton at dinner, as always a stunningly delicate
display of hospitality with elaborate meals and entertainment. The Chinese always
devoted the first meeting or meal to small talk and entertainment. They asked her
about her trip so far and how she had enjoyed Shanghai.

Since her first trip to Asia, in February 2009, Clinton had grown more comfortable
at managing the conversation with the Chinese and was able to draw her interlocutors
out of the established script. In a very affable way, she told Dai that while there
would be many opportunities over the coming two days to discuss heavy subjects, she
needed to touch base on a few things right away. Lee Myung-bak, the president of South
Korea, was giving an address to the nation the following day, and Clinton wanted to
hear from Dai about how China viewed the situation, what it was prepared to do to
make sure the
Cheonan
situation did not escalate. She was also keen to hear more about the state of mind
and health of Kim Jong Il, who had just visited Beijing. As usual, Dai didn’t say
much. The Chinese were reticent about their North Korean friends, as they knew American
officials would brief the press, and it would be in the newspapers in no time.

The following day, the S&ED was logistically flawless, but not free of worry and tension.
Discussions between the Chinese and the Americans were a very polite tug-of-war on
many issues. China kept its currency artificially low so that its goods stayed cheap
and appealing to buyers around the world. Washington said this was unfair competition
and regularly pushed Beijing to appreciate its currency. But now Europe was in a financial
crisis, Greece couldn’t pay its debts anymore, and the euro was looking shaky. The
Chinese worried about the impact the crisis would have on their exports. This was
not the time to make their products more expensive. The United States insisted the
European crisis would not affect global growth, but the Treasury secretary Timothy
Geithner was worried enough that he was planning to travel to the Old Continent to
tell the Europeans to get their act together before they jeopardized America’s own,
very slow, economic recovery.

And there was, of course, the
Cheonan
. All day long, the Chinese had said almost nothing in public about the incident.
At the end of the day, Clinton held a press conference, alone, to commend the wise
and prudent leadership of President Lee, who had just given his address. When journalists
prodded her about what the Chinese were ready to do about their rogue ally, Clinton
appealed to China’s sense of responsibility.

“The Chinese understand the reaction by the South Koreans; and they also understand
our unique responsibility for the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” Clinton
replied. She praised the cooperation with China in the past in response to North Korean
“provocations” and said they were discussing how to cooperate again now. The
Cheonan
had become a category of its own in the S&ED.