Remarks by Ambassador Jon Huntsman at the
China-U.S. Relations Conference
Renaissance Hotel, Beijing, China
October 22, 2009

U.S.-China Relations:  Looking Ahead After 30 Years

 

AMBASSADOR HUNTSMAN:  Thank you, David [Holl].  I am so very, very honoured and delighted to be here this morning with so many remarkable friends, new and old.  In particular, I want to thank the Bush family for their remarkable public service over the years.  To hear Neil up here and see the President speak just a moment ago was is inspiring.

I must tell you that I live in the old American ambassador’s residence, which was once occupied by the Bush family.  Every morning I wake up and I draw from that inspiration.  I’ve even gone so far as to buy an old bicycle.

(Speaking in Mandarin.)

I was just saying there is a significant difference here in that the brand that President Bush rode when he was here was the Flying Pigeon, which I rode when I was living in Singapore many years ago.  Replacement parts were very difficult to come by was the challenge.  I now ride a used Forever model, which is made in Shanghai of course, as my good friend Xu Kuangdi is very knowledgeable about.

I get out on the back roads.  I ride the hutongs.  I take my daughter on the back and I do my best to connect with citizens at all levels of society.  And I learned an important lesson from Ambassador Bush.  He was not shy about getting out and meeting people in every corner of the community and talking about the importance of the U.S.-China relationship.

As I was reading his book just the other night, China Diaries, which he told me to re-read by the way, he lamented in one chapter that trade in 1975 between the U.S. and China had gone from one billion dollars to five hundred million dollars.  Now that today is a small investment on the part of an American corporation, where today we have trade flows of four hundred billion strong.  So I want to thank the Bush family for their many kindnesses towards me and their great legacy of public service.

I also want to recognize General Scowcroft, who is here and who has some roots in the state of Utah that I represented as Governor.  But more importantly, he has done more for this relationship than I or a collection of so-called “China People” will ever do during our careers.  He created the stable foundation that we are all working from and benefiting from today.  And I am so very, very grateful to be able to call General Scowcroft a friend and someone who I have long admired over the years.

To be here as well with the great Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and for the signal contributions that he has made to the U.S.-China relationship.  I am humbled and in awe being surrounded by so many who have done so much to get us to where we are today, including Mayor Xu Kuangdi, who has been such a critical part of the evolution of this relationship.

And Madame Li [Xiaolin], you carry an electricity everywhere you go.  I've had the occasion of hosting Madame Li at the Governor’s mansion in Utah and then on a second occasion having her visit the Western Governors’ Association, where she so well represented different provinces of China that were interested in collaborating at the most local levels with governors and with mayors on issues like energy efficiency and climate change.  And therein lies a very important model for how our relationship I think will be conducted as we move forward.

Let me just offer a couple of thoughts, but starting with of course our president from Texas, Loftin, to remind the president that our 10^th President of the United States, John Tyler, did two very important things during his presidency.  You remember, he took over from President [William Henry Harrison] who spoke way too long during his inauguration, which is a reminder to me and others that you should never speak too long.  And he died about one month following the delivery of his inauguration, whereby Vice President John Tyler became President of the United States.

He did two things that were noteworthy, one domestic and one foreign policy.  On the domestic front, he annexed the Republic of Texas, which is kind of working in reserve these days I understand.  (Speaking in Mandarin.)  [What I just said was that] in some senses, people see Texas as as much a foreign country, the Republic of Texas, as they do just another one of the many states.

On the foreign policy front, John Tyler appointed our first U.S. envoy to China.  His name was Caleb Cushing.  He was appointed in 1844.  And in 1845, he completed the Treaty of Wanghia, which if any of you are interested in you can read through it.  It was patterned somewhat after the Treaty of Nanjing, dealing with customs and port facilitations and trade facilitation, and consular issues as well.

I look back at the work of Caleb Cushing, 1844-1845.  He had been the Attorney General before becoming Ambassador and a Representative in the U.S. Congress.  And I say, much of the work we do today, in a sense, is still a lot of the work that was done in the earliest days of this relationship.  Let me just remind you of a few things before I take my seat and turn it over to the respected Foreign Minister.

We’re celebrating 30 years of the formal bilateral relationship.  And as you look back 30 years ago, it’s very interesting to put this relationship in perspective, then versus now.  Thirty years ago, we had 1,200 foreigners living in Beijing.  Today, we have 1,200 – actually more than that – [Americans affiliated with] the U.S. Embassy alone.  Today, we have probably more American citizens in China than the entire state of Montana.

Thirty years ago no private cars were on the road.  Now there are 60 million, as you can all attest to having driven back and forth.  Ten million units are now manufactured each and every year.  China's GDP has increased 82-fold in that period of time, a testament to the ingenuity, the commercial dynamism, and the entrepreneurship of the Chinese people since the door opening measures of Deng Xiaoping in the late-1970s.

In 1979, U.S.-China trade was in the low billions.  Today, it exceeds four hundred billion, in large part a result of China's acceding to the World Trade Organization in November of 2001.

Thirty years ago talk about the rule of law, about civil society were mere luxuries in a few of the intellectual salons.  Today, it is a subject of internet chatter, discussions in leadership circles, driven by 60 million bloggers, 325 million internet users.

In 1979, the U.S. Embassy issued 4,700 non-immigrant visas for Chinese citizens to visit the United States, of whom 770 were students.  Last year, our Embassy and consulates throughout the country issued nearly a half million non-immigrant visas to Chinese citizens and 77,000 were students.  That’s right, a hundred times more than in 1979.

There were but a handful of U.S. news correspondents in the late 1970s.  Every one of them wrote a book about living here such was the appetite for information about China.  Today, there are more than 150 correspondents.  Every one them writes at least a blog and nearly all seem to have book contracts.

Now as China has re-emerged, as our bilateral relationship has matured, it has become obvious that absent our close cooperation, in ways in which our two Presidents have said should be positive and comprehensive, many of the pressing global challenges cannot be successfully addressed, let alone successfully managed.  We share many of the same views about problems in the world and recognize that our work together has implications far beyond our bilateral concerns.

This doesn’t mean we will always agree, but it should mean that we will always be respectful, treat each other as equal partners, and more than ever before seek to understand our shared interests.

Let me just conclude by saying that our President of the United States will be here shortly.  I was called into the Oval Office many months ago, unexpectedly.  I had another job at the time and it was going well.  I heard the President speak about the China relationship in ways that suggested to me that he had given much thought and consideration to the U.S.-China relationship.

He said I expect that this is a relationship that should be managed in a positive, a cooperative, and a comprehensive fashion.  And I said, I think, Mr. President, we can do that.  We’re going to have our inevitable ups and downs as we talk about civil society and human rights, and we hear from our friends in China about core issues.  But we need to somehow ensure that there is mutual respect and we do a better job in identifying our shared interests, because they are many.

And the President then went on to say and we have some headline issues that we all need to work on a little bit harder, and they include energy efficiency and climate change; and regional security, like North Korea and Iran; and of course the global economy.  And then there are issues like proliferation and nuclear safety that we are all interested in.  And he was absolutely right when he said that our relationship and the way it is managed will in fact shape the 21^st century.  I have no doubt about that.

I am looking forward to President Obama’s visit.  I think it will be a very unique opportunity for the people of China to hear and learn more about the United States of America.  Just as students here who are part of this program are learning on both sides how to bridge the gap, the Pacific divide that sometimes is vast.  It can be bridged, but it's bridged by people and it's bridged by mutual understanding.

So I will simply close with my favourite aphorism that I think we always need to remember as we manage this relationship going forward and that is (speaking in Mandarin), "hu xiang bang mang, hu xiang xue xi, hu xiang jin bu."  Because if we remember that together we have to help one another, and together we have to problem solve, and that means that together we will be able to progress around world problems, the world most definitely will have a much more peaceful and prosperous legacy.

Thank you so very much.

 

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