June 13, 1994|JIM MANN |
TIMES STAFF WRITER WASHINGTON — For years, China relied on its importance in the Cold War as its main bargaining tool with the United States. Now it uses its economic might. But for more than two decades it has had another hidden, powerful weapon in dealing with the U.S.: its sophistication in courting those Americans who count the most.
A long-secret, two-volume history of U.S.-China negotiations, released by the CIA to The Times, details how Beijing repeatedly "manipulated" top U.S. officials, from the Nixon through Reagan years.
The report, written by the RAND Corp. for U.S. intelligence agencies, is laced with examples of how the Chinese handled the United States' foreign policy elite, including Henry A. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Bush.
Starting with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai in 1971, the Chinese used a variety of tactics--from serving opulent banquets to playing U.S. presidential politics--to advance their interests on issues such as Taiwan and Indochina.
"The most distinctive characteristic of Chinese negotiating behavior is an effort to develop and manipulate strong interpersonal relationships with foreign officials," the report concluded.
The study contains the first transcripts of top-level conversations between U.S. and Chinese leaders ever made public. Among them are the historic visit of July, 1971--when Kissinger, President Richard Nixon's national security adviser, became the first U.S. official in more than two decades to visit the world's most populous country--and Nixon's own trip to China in 1972.
Until now, scholars say, virtually all public knowledge of these events has come from the sometimes self-serving accounts of Nixon, Kissinger and other U.S. officials.
The 1985 study, which The Times obtained under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit after five years of requests, paints a less heroic and less flattering portrait of the Americans than the accounts based on their memoirs.
In essence, the study shows how skillfully China conducted its diplomacy with the United States--a lesson demonstrated once again last month by Beijing's success in persuading the Clinton Administration to back away from its attempts to impose human rights conditions on trade privileges.
From the earliest days of the Nixon-Kissinger initiatives, the study says, the Chinese tried to exploit individual insecurities, play off Presidents against their domestic rivals and orchestrate meetings to maximize Americans' sense of "gratitude, awe and helplessness."
