How other US presidents handled the dragon

BEIJING, China — China is a tricky place for U.S. presidents.

President Barack Obama begins his first trip to China Nov. 15, with his policy toward China still largely untested. Obama has continued on a course of trade and engagement, getting tougher than his processor and invoking a protection on tire imports that spurred tit-for-tat trade tariffs between the two countries. He has said little about human rights in China and last month became the first U.S. president in nearly 20 years to refuse to meet with the Dalai Lama in Washington.

Given the enormity of the U.S.-China relationship, it’s easy to forget formal relations didn’t exist until just 30 years ago. Here, GlobalPost looks back at U.S. presidents in the People’s Republic of China:

President Richard Nixon (1969-74): In 1972, Nixon set America on a course of engagement with China. He was the first U.S. president to visit the People’s Republic, where he met with Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. In the two decades before Nixon’s groundbreaking trip, U.S.-China relations were marked by hostility and misunderstanding.

“We will have differences in the future. But what we must do is to find a way to see that we can have differences without being enemies in war,” Nixon said in a speech to Congress before leaving for China. “If we can make progress toward that goal on this trip, the world will be a much safer world and the chance particularly for all of those young children over there to grow up in a world of peace will be infinitely greater.”

Obama T-shirts in Beijing (David Gray/Reuters)

Nixon’s visit, which came after nearly a year of secret preparations and “ping-pong diplomacy,” ended with the Shanghai Communiqué. The document (actually signed in Hangzhou) spelled out intent to normalize diplomatic relations, but diplomatic ties took seven more years to negotiate.

For more about Nixon in China, including audio tapes, visit our friends at the Council on Foreign Relations.

President Gerald Ford (1974-77): Ford, who served just two-and-a-half years in the White House, carried forward Nixon’s China policy. He followed up with talks and a visit to Beijing in 1975 (with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and liaison George H.W. Bush). Yet his foreign policy was dominated by final U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam and managing tensions with the Soviet Union.

President Jimmy Carter (1977-81): Carter was at the helm 30 years ago when the United States ended its formal relationship with Taiwan in exchange for normalized relations with China (China held that out as a condition of diplomatic relations). Under Carter, the U.S. recognized China’s contention that Taiwan is part of China.

“It’s important that we make progress toward normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China,” Carter said in a foreign policy speech in 1977. “We see the American and Chinese relationship as a central element of our global policy and China as a key force for global peace.”

Historians say there was disagreement within the Carter administration, but the U.S. bet a stronger alliance with China would help counter the Soviet Union. Carter hosted Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping in Washington but did not go to China. He has visited several times since leaving office, however, and returns this month to tour the Sichuan earthquake zone with Habitat for Humanity.

President Ronald Reagan (1981-89): Reagan, staunch anti-communist and supporter of Taiwan, is not remembered in China as a great leader of Sino-U.S. relations. Yet Reagan engaged broadly with China and the two countries signed a 1981 agreement to reduce American weapons sales to Taiwan.

He visited China in 1984, marking the first U.S. presidential trip here since Ford in 1975. It was near the end of his first term in office, and he came with an agenda to forge economic and social ties as the country embarked on “opening up” to the world. A controversy erupted back home when it emerged that Reagan’s speech in Beijing was censored by state-run television.

President George H.W. Bush (1989-93): Bush came to office with more first-hand experience in the People’s Republic than any previous president. Under Ford, he was de facto ambassador to China for 14 months. Bush arrived in February, 1989, only a month after taking office. He was given a bicycle as a reminder of his early days in Beijing, and he pressed an agenda of continued engagement. He also reaffirmed the “One China” policy.

 The trip was not without controversy. Astrophysicist and Tiananmen dissident Fang Lizhi was invited by the U.S. side to a formal dinner with the president in Beijing; Fang was physically barred by police. For Obama’s visit, China is said to be controlling 100 percent of event invitations.

Bush’s promising China relationship came crashing down in disaster a few months later, on June 4, 1989. The Chinese government unleashed troops in Beijing and elsewhere to suppress anti-government demonstrations from the Tiananmen movement. Troops killed untold hundreds of unarmed citizens, and the United States recoiled from economic and political ties with China.

President Bill Clinton (1993-2001): At first, Clinton continued a tough policy against China over the Tiananmen crackdown and human rights. But in 1997, Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the United States and relations began to warm. Clinton came to China in 1998, nine years after the Bush visit and Tiananmen. By his second term, Clinton was firmly on-board with a policy of engagement.

“One of the reasons that I came here was to discuss both privately and publicly issues of personal freedom,” he told reporters at the start of his trip. “So I think it’s very important for me to do that. But I think it makes the case — it makes it all the more important that we continue to work with the Chinese and to engage them.”

Two major incidents marred his relationship-building with China, but both eventually blew over: the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the downing of an American spy plane in southern China in 2001. Clinton took China ties a step further than his predecessors by negotiating China’s 2001 entry to the World Trade Organization.

President George W. Bush (2001-09): Bush was vilified for his policies just about everywhere else in the world – except China. Over two terms, he visited the PRC four times and established firm trade and political ties. Economic issues became the primary concern, and ties deepened after Sept. 11, 2001. At the same time, political scientists say, Bush continued to press China on human rights and other issues. He hosted top Chinese leaders three times in Washington and left a growing interdependence between the two countries.

On human rights, Bush concerned himself with religion in China, although his administration pressed the case for non-religious dissidents. During a visit to a Christian church in Beijing in 2005, Bush spoke about religious freedom.

“My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly,” he said. “A healthy society is a society that welcomes all faiths and gives people a chance to express themselves through worship with the Almighty.”