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The best of
Asia Society every week.
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CHINAFILE
The New
Tiananmen Papers
In
the aftermath of the June 4, 1989, massacre of Chinese protesters in
Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, President George H.W. Bush set out to
reassure the Chinese government that the United States remained
committed to a strong Sino-American relationship. The reasons for
this were partly practical — the U.S. viewed China as a key strategic
bulwark against the Soviet Union — and partly ideological. One day
after the massacre, Bush told
reporters that “the depth of the feeling towards democracy
in China is so great that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle
and return to total repression.”
The post-Tiananmen actions of the U.S. government are laid out in a
series of declassified documents available at the George H.W. Bush
Presidential Library at Texas A&M University. China scholar David Shambaugh,
who photographed these documents during a recent visit to the
archive, shared them with ChinaFile.
Shambaugh
writes that the president’s decision to reaffirm ties with
China marked “a turning point in the history of China and U.S.-China
relations, and Bush did not hesitate to choose the side of national
interests over moral indignation or squeezing the Chinese Communist
regime harder so that it might actually collapse or be overthrown.”
Read
the documents here. In addition to Shambaugh, Evan Medeiros,
Susan
Thornton, James
Mann, James
Green, and Orville
Schell have contributed their thoughts in the most
recent ChinaFile
conversation.
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POLICY
Trade War: How the U.S. and China Misread Each
Other
At
the conclusion of the recent G20 summit, the United States and China
agreed to resume negotiations over ending the trade dispute between
the two countries. Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler
sees the resurrection of talks as a positive outcome — but says it is
unlikely a deal will materialize quickly.
“Both sides really need the political will, the political guidance,
and the political commitment to reach a deal,” she said during an
appearance on the
Congressional
Quarterly Roll Call podcast, “and I don’t
think either side feels that urgency right now.”
Why did the previous round of talks break down in early May? Cutler
attributes their failure to the U.S. and China misreading each other.
“[Chinese President] Xi
Jinping thought [U.S. President Donald] Trump
needed a deal desperately, and therefore just crossed things out of
the negotiating text. [Xi thought] Trump wouldn’t care and would say
‘fine, we’re done,’” Cutler said. “That didn’t happen, and talks
broke down.
“But the U.S. has also misread China,” she added. “I think the U.S.
thought that China’s economy was so weak, and the tariffs would make
it so difficult for Xi Jinping, that China would basically agree to
American demands in this negotiation. That has not happened. China’s
position, I think, has hardened over the past seven weeks.”
Listen
to the entire podcast here. Cutler also spoke about the
U.S.-China trade dispute as well as other issues during a recent
conversation with the U.S.-China Business Council. Watch
here.
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ARTS
Architecture, Conservation, and Indentity in
India
Asia
Society India recently hosted two discussions exploring the nature of
architecture, a subject infused with notions of Indian identity.
On June 22, George
Jose spoke with filmmakers Avijit Mukul Kishore
and Rohan
Shivkumar about their documentary films Nostalgia for the Future
and Lovely Villa,
focusing on questions of modernity, architecture, and identity. Watch
the complete video here. And on June 27, leading
conservation architect Vikas
Dilawari delivered a lecture and presentation on the
history of Mumbai's built heritage and the process and impact of the
city's conservation projects. Watch
the complete video here.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
- Orville
Schell and Susan
Shirk, co-chairs of the Task Force on U.S.-China
Policy, will discuss their report Course
Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy
during executive roundtable discussions held in Silicon Valley
on July 10 and in San Francisco on the following day. More
details here.
- Graham
Fletcher,
Australia’s ambassador to China, will discuss the bilateral
relationship during an executive briefing held July
10 in Sydney and the
following day in Melbourne.
- Asia
Society Policy Institute’s Lindsey Ford and other
experts will participate in a one-day dialogue on the burgeoning
relationships between East Asia and the Middle East on July 12
at the Hotel Jen Tanglin in Singapore. Details
here.
- The
drummer and composer Susie
Ibarra leads the DreamTime Ensemble in a
performance of Fragility:
A Game in Polyrhythms on July 13 at Governors Island
in New York. More
information here.
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