Others in the Soviet Union wanted Gorbachev to openly condemn the Chinese government. The radical politician Boris Yeltsin and the human-rights advocate Andrei Sakharov decried Deng’s actions as ‘a crime against the people’ and drew parallels between the Chinese crackdown and the Soviet military’s ‘repression’ of demonstrations in Tbilisi, Georgia, in April, only weeks before Gorbachev went to Beijing. (Interestingly, Deng had cited that incident to his own people as an example of good discipline.) But Gorbachev had no intention of emulating Yeltsin and Sakharov. He was not about to sacrifice the hard-won gains of his personal diplomacy for the sake of abstract principles.[149] China was too important to the USSR to risk alienating Deng by what both sides would have agreed was ‘interference in internal affairs’.
Bush’s reaction to Tiananmen was similarly cautious. The Americans had not been surprised by the turn of events – James Lilley, the new US ambassador in Beijing, had been predicting a crackdown for weeks and the president himself had been careful not to make any encouraging noises to the demonstrators to avoid inflaming passions.[150] He told reporters on 30 May: ‘I’m old enough to remember Hungary in 1956, and I would want to do nothing in terms of statement or exhortation that would encourage a repeat of that.’[151]
In private the president had sent Deng a letter three days earlier appealing to him frankly as an old friend and warning against ‘violence, repression and bloodshed’, lest this damage Sino-American relations.[152] Deng took no notice. On 4 June Bush tried to reach him by phone but Deng simply refused to take the call. It was a blatant snub: even a lao pengyou had no clout when it didn’t suit China.[153]
Deng clearly believed he could risk the crackdown. He predicted that the West would soon forget, and in any case they knew that trade with China was too important to sever relations altogether. Indeed, Deng had been careful to reassure Washington about his deep concern for their mutual relations. The Chinese leader was not wrong in his assumptions. The signals from Washington were mixed. On the one hand, Bush ‘deplored’ Deng’s decision to use force against peaceful demonstrators[154] and suspended military sales and high-level official contacts with China. He also offered humanitarian and medical assistance to anyone who had been injured in the Tiananmen tragedy. But, on the other hand, he had no intention of severing diplomatic relations or pressing for tough sanctions, from which only ordinary people would suffer. Given his personal bond with Deng and his faith in the magnetic attraction of capitalism, Bush sought to avoid any confrontation that would jeopardise a blossoming Sino-American relationship in the long run. China in Bush’s eyes had come such a long way. If he acted too harshly, he might feed the anti-reformist, hard-line elements in Beijing and set the clock back – something he wanted to avoid at all costs. But if he was seen as acting too softly, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe including the USSR might feel encouraged to use force against their political opponents. The problem was that his room for manoeuvre was severely limited – especially at home where Congress was calling for stricter sanctions and the human-rights lobby wanted to punish the ‘butchers of Tiananmen’ and denounced Bush as the ‘appeaser’ of Beijing.[155]
Juggling these various pressures, and having publicly defended presidential pre-eminence in foreign policy against congressional encroachment, on 21 June Bush tried again to reach out to Deng. This time he sent a handwritten letter composed, he said, ‘with a heavy heart’. He appealed to their ‘genuine friendship’, stressed his respect for Deng personally, and even trumpeted his own ‘great reverence for Chinese history, culture and tradition’. He made it clear that he would not dictate or interfere but appealed to Deng not to ‘let the aftermath of the tragic recent events undermine a vital relationship patiently built over the past seventeen years’. Mindful of the 4 June snub, the president added, ‘I would of course welcome a personal reply to this letter. This matter is too important to be left to our bureaucracies.’[156]
This time personal diplomacy worked. Bush got a reply within twenty-four hours – sufficiently positive that at the beginning of July Bush asked Scowcroft to smuggle himself into China for talks with Deng and Li. It was an epic adventure story reminiscent of Kissinger’s Marco Polo visit to Beijing in July 1971. They set off at 5 a.m. on 30 June 1989 from Andrews Air Force Base, travelling on a C-141 military cargo plane ‘in which had been installed what was euphemistically called a portable “comfort pallet”, a huge box containing bunks and place to sit’. The aircraft could be refuelled in the air, avoiding the need to land anywhere en route, and their official destination was Okinawa but that was amended on the way. All USAF markings had been removed and the crew started in military uniforms but changed to civilian clothes before arriving in Beijing. The mission was so secret that Chinese military air defence had not been informed. Fortunately, when they saw an unidentified aircraft entering Chinese airspace near Shanghai and asked whether they should shoot it down, the call went right through to President Yang Shangkun who told them to hold their fire. The American party landed safely at lunchtime on 1 July and spent the rest of the day recovering from their ordeal at the State Guest House.[157]
Scowcroft’s conversation with Deng on 2 July in the Great Hall of the People set the parameters for future policy on both sides – so much so that it’s worth setting out their positions in detail.[158] Deng started by saying that he had ‘chosen’ Bush as a special friend because, ever since they first met, he had found him ‘trustworthy’. Of course, the problems in Sino-US relations could not be ‘solved by two persons from the perspective of being friends’, the Chinese leader said. So Deng was pleased that Bush had sent Scowcroft ‘as his emissary’. It showed that Bush understood the complexities of the situation. He had taken ‘a wise and cool-headed action – an action well received by us’. And so, ‘it seems there is still hope to maintain our originally good relations’.[159]
Nevertheless, in Deng’s view, the blunt truth was that ‘on a large scale the United States has impugned Chinese interests’ and ‘hurt Chinese dignity’. That for him was the ‘crux of the matter’. Some Americans who were keen for the PRC and its socialist system to be overthrown had helped stir up ‘counter-revolutionary rebellion’. And because the US had tied the knot, to borrow from a Chinese proverb, Deng insisted ‘our hope is that in its future course of action the United States will seek to untie the knot’. In other words, it was up to Bush to remedy the situation.
His government, Deng added, was determined to put down ‘the counter-revolutionary leaders’ in line with ‘Chinese laws’. And he insisted that ‘China will by no means waver in its resolution’. Otherwise, he asked rhetorically, ‘how can the PRC continue to exist?’ Deng left Scowcroft in no doubt that any interference in China’s internal affairs would not be tolerated and he warned Congress and the US media not to add more fuel to the fire. Indeed, he expected Washington to find a ‘feasible way and method’ to settle their differences regarding the events of Tiananmen.[160]
Scowcroft responded with the studied courtesy that always mattered in America’s relations with China. He spoke at length about the personal bond between Bush and China and his own depth of feeling for the country. He tried to underline the strong US investment in the steady ‘deepening’ of its relations with Beijing since 1972, from which both sides had benefited strategically and economically, as well as on a human level. He also stressed the significance of his visit. ‘Our presence here after a trip of thousands of kilometres, in confidence so as not to imply anything but an attempt to communicate, is symbolic of the importance President Bush places on this relationship and the efforts he is prepared to take to preserve it.’[161]
Having echoed Deng’s emphasis on the importance of personal friendship, Scowcroft then inserted the irreducible American agenda. ‘It is into this bilateral climate of deepening cooperation and growing sympathy that the events of Tiananmen Square have imposed themselves.’ He explained that the president had to cope with his electorate’s