UNITED STATES-CHINA RELATIONS: THE PROCESS OF NORMALIZATION OF RELATIONS MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1975 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 2:07 p.m. in room H-236, the Capitol, Hon. Lee H. Hamilton (chairman of the subcommittee), presiding. Mr. HAMILTON. The meeting of the subcommittee will come to order. Today the Special Subcommittee on Investigations continues its hearings on United States-People's Republic of China relations. While we are interested in an assessment of the recent visit of President Ford to China we are equally concerned with the present status of overall relations and the prospects for improvements in the months ahead. Our witnesses this afternoon have been working closely with the Chinese on the practical interactions that have been the cornerstone of our improving relations with China since the 1972 Shanghai Communique. They have been involved with trade issues and various cultural, scientific, and technological exchanges that have occurred. We are happy to have with us Ambassador Christopher H. Phillips, president of the National Council for United States-China Trade, Anne Keatley, staff director of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China, and Douglas Murray, director of the United States-China Relations Program at Stanford University and vice chairman of the Board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. Ms. Keatley is accompanied by Charles Slichter, a physicist at the University of Illinois and chairman of the China committee's most recent delegation to China. We welcome each of you here. You all have fairly lengthly statements. We would appreciate it if you would summarize those statements for us in approximately 10, not to exceed 15, minutes. Each of your statements will be made a part of the record in full. If you do that I think we will have more time for questions. Do you have any preference as to who leads off? STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS P. MURRAY, DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED Mr. MURRAY. Thank you very much. It is a privilege to be here. The reason for my speaking first is that I will make some general remarks about the exchange process, and Ms. Keatley will be talking specifically about scholarly exchanges and Ambassador Phillips about the trade dimension. Hopefully my introductory remarks will have some bearing on what follows in the other fields as well. THE UNITED STATES-CHINA EXCHANGE PROCESS I think it is important to look at the United States-China exchange relationship first as a symbolic phenomenon, symbolic of an ongoing relationship that does not yet involve full diplomatic ties, full diplomatic "normalization." But in doing so, it is easy to overlook the very great substantive value that exchanges have-as a means of working out potential cooperation between two very dissimilar peoples, and communicating across a divide that is not only cultural but political, a combination that may make it the most unique and serious kind of divide in the world today, that between Chinese and Western civilization and that between Western democratic forms and Chinese communism. The effort and the skill needed to bridge that divide through the exchange process is perhaps unique. EXTENT OF EXCHANGE RELATIONS I would characterize the exchanges in the last several years in several dichotomous ways. First, by saying that it is, relatively, surprisingly large. It may be that the United States is second only to Japan in the volume of its exchange relationship with China, in the number of people going back and forth. But absolutely it is extraordinarily small, 10,000 to 12,000 private Americans having visited the PRC in the last 5 years, and only about 700 Chinese citizens having come here. Put in an order of magnitude, something like 1 in every 20,000 Americans has visited China and 1 in every 1 million PRC citizens has come to the United States. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS Another dichotomy here is that these exchanges have been extraordinarily valuable as personal, professional experiences, setting up networks of personal relationships between people that I think could have very great importance in the years and decades ahead. The Americans involved have been musicians, athletes, journalists, scholars, local civic leaders, university presidents, national leaders, Congressmen and Congresswomen, among others. The sense of how China operates, the sense of reality that these exchanges have produced within the United States, I think, simply cannot be overestimated. PROBLEM OF SUPERFICIALITY Yet one of the major problems of this exchange relationship has been a tendency toward superficiality, derived in large part from China's social system, which does not easily open up aspects of its own development to close scrutiny by foreigners. This has led to the effort on the American side being conducted with great persistence and a good deal of frustration in trying to deepen and improve the quality and substance of the exchange process. PROCESS AND PROBLEMS A third dichotomy is to say that these exchanges in all fields are so important, and so much a part of the political relationship, that they necessarily will continue and develop further to some degree, although they will most likely change primarily in their nature and quality rather than in their volume. But this process is going to be filled with difficult problems, problems that are identified in my paper and seem to me to fall into the categories of reciprocity, that is, being sure there is an equal benefit on each side of this exchange relationship; of content, making sure that what does go on in these exchanges is of real value to the American participants, as we hope it is to the Chinese; and of integrity, making sure we do not surrender our own values, do not surrender our willingness to speak candidly about our experiences with China, or to speak frankly with the Chinese, for fear that the exchange relationship will somehow be damaged. EXCHANGE IS NOT TOURISM An important point, I think, is that we are not talking here about tourism of any sort. Tourism per se has not developed between the United States and China, or with China and virtually any other country. We are talking about a carefully planned and executed program by which China engages in cultural diplomacy. Since we, as a people, inundate them with visa requests, millions of them, and since we do not refuse visas to the fairly small number of Chinese citizens wishing to come here, the practical result is that the Chinese largely control the flow in both directions. They are able to pick, from the vast supply of Americans who apply, those whom they want to visit China; and by controlling very carefully those who seek to come here they give us no reason to refuse them entry. PURPOSES OF EXCHANGE I think the principal purposes of the exchange process apply to all three areas I will let Ms. Keatley and Ambassador Phillips correct me-trade, scholarship, and culture. I list these purposes, as seen from Peking and perhaps Washington, under four headings: First, the symbolic value, the need of both countries to symbolize the ongoing relationship. Second, the substantive technological or functional value of the information and views that are gained through the exchange process. Third are the efforts to influence and cultivate public opinion, certainly an important goal of Chinese policy in dealing with us, and I would suggest not entirely absent from our purposes in dealing with China. Several American visitors, especially Chinese-Americans who have perhaps toured more informally within the PRC, have suggested that the impact of exchanges has been even more profound within China than it has been within our country. Fourth, on the U.S. side, is simply the curiosity and interest of private citizens which has little to do with national policies. CULTURAL EXCHANGES I should say a word about the specific area of cultural exchanges, as distinct from scholarships and trade. China's goals have been very heavily in cultivating public opinion within the United States, developing an image, and therefore heavily toward large spectaculars, performing arts groups, sports teams, and so on, and relatively less in regard to serious educational, professional, and civic affairs delegations. The National Committee on United States-China Relations has had a rather difficult time arranging for substantive groups from the PRL in fields such as urban affairs, world affairs, or education to visit this country. It is one of the critical imbalances in the exchange relationship. In the last minute or two, I will add what perhaps should have been the first point in these remarks. That is the critical distinction between what have come to be called the government-facilitated exchanges and the entirely private exchanges. GOVERNMENT FACILITATED EXCHANGES In the Shanghai Communique, the two governments agreed that they would facilitate exchange relationships. Exchanges that meet the purposes of the Shanghai Communique are negotiated and handled in the United States by private organizations, primarily the Committee on Scholarly Communication and the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and in a few cases by other organizations. These exchanges are negotiated both by the private U.S. organizations with their Chinese counterparts, and simultaneously between the two governments. But these government-facilitated exchanges account for barely 6 percent of the Americans who have visited the PRC and only about two-thirds of the Chinese who have come to this country. Something like 10,000 Americans have gone to China without any reference to U.S. Government facilitation. I think we are going to see the government-facilitated exchanges playing an even smaller role in the total proportion, the total volume, and perhaps in the visibility of exchanges. PRIVATE EFFORTS In regard to private efforts within this country, given the fascination that American citizens have developed about China, a number of organizations other than those designated to conduct facilitated exchanges have come to play an active role. I would specifically mention the United States-China People's Friendship Associations, which in the last 3 years have proliferated to the point that they now have chapters in over 70 American cities. They annually receive quotas from the PRC, enabling them to send anywhere from two to five or six delegations per year from each of three geographic regions. Within the last 3 years, several hundred Americans have visited China through United States-China People's Friendship Association auspices. It seems likely that the volume will increase steadily. No Chinese delegations have yet come to the United States under their auspices. |