Understanding the “Most Important Bilateral Relationship in the World”

Abstract

Five decades ago, ping-pong diplomacy followed by then U.S. presidential national security advisor Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to China ushered in a new era of China-U.S. relations. Five decades later, Washington and Beijing are still exploring ways to manage their relationship in the midst of ups and downs.

Neil Bush, the son of late U.S. President George H.W. Bush, is the founder of the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.

Neil Bush

Five decades ago, ping-pong diplomacy followed by then U.S. presidential national security advisor Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to China ushered in a new era of China-U.S. relations. Five decades later, Washington and Beijing are still exploring ways to manage their relationship in the midst of ups and downs. President George H.W. Bush, who was an old friend of China, and his son President George W. Bush paid more visits to China than any other U.S. president. Neil Bush talks to Dr. Wang Huiyao, founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), about how China and the U.S., two giants with different systems and backgrounds, could seek common ground while reserving differences to work together on issues like global safety, peace and prosperity.

Wang Huiyao: You said your first visit to China was in 1975 and you have been to China regularly since then. Since you have visited China many times and witnessed firsthand the tremendous changes that China has undergone, how do you see the China-U.S. relationship?

Neil Bush: I’ll start by reflecting back on October 1971. The People’s Republic of China was re-admitted to the UN and I happened to be in New York City during that vote. The first thing my dad did when the Chinese delegation arrived in the United States was to invite them to lunch at my grandmother’s home in Connecticut to show American hospitality. And from that point onwards, which was his first real contact with Chinese leaders, my dad had affection for the Chinese and high aspirations for how our two countries should be working together.

I was in Beijing in 1975. Three of my siblings and I visited China for five weeks. We were in Beijing for four weeks and then traveled with my mother to Wuxi, Nanjing and Shanghai by train. So looking back at that time, back in 1975, I couldn’t have predicted or imagined that China would have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; that the middle class would be growing as rapidly as it is; that the economy continues to turn out new jobs and crank out wealth for the people; that people would enjoy daily freedoms that frankly back then were clearly unimaginable in China. I’ve been deeply impressed by this.

I think one of the things that separates me from other folks is the fact that I’ve been there and seen it grow over many years. I’ve come to some deep conclusions. One, there’s no single system that works for every country. Every country needs to develop a system that is suitable and fitting for its conditions. China’s system has worked for China, if you look at the results over the years since I was first there and over the years since U.S.-China formal ties were established. The results speak for themselves. I believe that our system works for us and the Chinese system works for China. We need to be respectful of that.

Wang Huiyao: Do you remember the things you saw in Beijing on your first trip?

Neil Bush: We rode bikes all over the place. It was really fun. We rode to Tiananmen Square. I distinctly remember pulling up to a “Stop” sign, where the guards were stationed, with their hands up, and the crowd of bikes was stopped. When they saw us Americans, the white guys with long noses, they looked us over and they almost fell off their bikes. We went to the zoo to see the pandas and other animals, and there was a bigger crowd following us than those looking at the animals. But it was a friendly adventure for us.

One of the things I observed, and this was something Dad and I talked about during the trip, was that if you observed Chinese consumers and individuals walking by a bike shop or a shop that had kitchen utensils or whatever, you could see in their eyes that they wanted more, that they wanted a better bike, a better “Flying Pigeon” (the iconic Chinese bicycle brand that started manufacturing in 1949). And so it was pretty clear that there were aspirations even then that led to this incredible growth and the realization of potential.

Now when I go back to China, there are cars everywhere. It’s totally transformed. High-speed trains and Internet connectivity are everywhere. It’s like a whole new world that couldn’t have been imagined back in the bicycle-riding days of the 1970s.

It’s a leap forward. As I mentioned, China’s high-speed rail. Other developing countries or even developed countries can’t keep up with China in the construction of high-speed rail. I’ve been on many Chinese trains that have been very efficient. They are quiet. They are fast. They are clean. China is enjoying a leap of capability that really sets it apart in many respects. So yeah, it has gone from the bicycle- to car-consuming capital of the world and now, a leap to high-speed rail as well.

Wang Huiyao: In the recent past, particularly during the presidency of Donald Trump, we saw China-U.S. relations deteriorate. How do you assess the relationship now? How could it reach normalcy with both countries working for a better relationship?

Neil Bush: You mentioned the deterioration in the relationship and it strikes me that there are a number of converging factors that have led to the U.S. becoming fearful of China’s rise, and that fear was reflected in the harsh rhetoric under the Trump administration. And with that came a kind of isolationist approach of stepping back and not having dialogues. Dad believed at his core that countries, families and friends needed to stay in touch with one another in order to better understand one another, in order to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes, so that when conflicts arise you can address those conflicts in a mature way. We got away from that for five years or so and maybe even prior to that.

That, coupled with the American problem of “America First,” “Build the wall,” anti-immigration and “We are the greatest country on the face of the planet,” and seeing China’s economic rise to where it’s now, just behind the U.S. economy on a gross basis—not per capita, but gross basis, a lot of politicians are fearful of losing our prominence in that way.

And then a third factor is political, given that there’s not very good information about China floating around in the ecosystem in the U.S. Politically China is an easy target. We see politicians blasting the Communist Party of China as though it was the party that manifested itself in different ways very early in the People’s Republic of China’s history. There’s a lot of China-bashing and it gets to the Thucydides Trap issue as China rises and America, the prominent power in the world, faces this rising power. How are we going to react? A lot of people in our country and many politicians are reacting quite poorly to it and thinking that China is an existential threat to our economic and national security.

Clearly, any bilateral relationship is going to have issues between the two countries involved. We have issues with France. We have issues with Germany. We have issues with Israel. We have issues with our closest friends. We’re going to have issues with China and we’re going to address them. We have values that we stand firmly behind. We’re going to express those values in a way that’s hopefully respectful and not finger-pointing or in a derogatory way. We’ll express our values in the hope that we can help shape outcomes in that kind of thing. But the ultimate goal should be to come together as often as possible in as many different ways as possible and to resolve challenges respectfully and maturely.

My view of the tariffs (on Chinese goods imposed during the Trump administration) is that it was such a stupid idea to start with—raising tariffs that was a tax on American consumers, hurting American businesses. It was a non-starter. There’s nothing in Economics 101 that says a trade imbalance is unnatural or inappropriate or bad. So it was a silly thesis in the first place. Deep down inside, that logic might have been to be punitive to try set the Chinese economy back. But that was illogical as well. So it was a failed policy that needs to be reversed.

Wang Huiyao: The COVID-19 pandemic cut us off in terms of travel. And we have actually become more divided because of it. There’s the COVID-19 virus origin-tracing issue, blaming and finger-pointing at China. How do you think we should really work together on this? How can we get China and the U.S. to focus on pandemic-fighting, rather than finger-pointing and shouting at each other?

Neil Bush: It’s a question I would ask on a number of major topics that affect the sustainability of life on Earth for humans, including climate change, food insecurity and everything health-related. The pandemic is the most obvious and most pressing matter. But because of climate change, we have all kinds of natural disasters. How can we learn to alter course amid climate change so that Earth will be able to carry on for many more years beyond the current trajectory? These are big issues and clearly the two largest economies in the world have to work together. In fact, it’s hard to imagine solving these issues without the collaboration of China and the United States. There’s a clear mandated necessity for all of us to share our common humanity in addressing these kinds of issues. We should learn from one another.

We should be open-minded about looking at what New Zealand has done, what Australia has done, what China has done and what other countries have done. We should share the best technologies that exist for vaccine development and have manufacturers all over the world convert to qualified vaccine manufacturing so that the global population can be more readily vaccinated against this pandemic. All of these kinds of things need an environment of collaboration, which, sadly, doesn’t exist today.

I do believe that the Biden administration is creating more opportunities for exchange and dialogue and inevitably, when you sit down and you have dialogue with your counterparts, good things come out of it: better understanding in addressing serious issues. The topic of collaborating on the pandemic and healthcare-related issues in general should be front and center for discussion.

Wang Huiyao: So how can we really improve? What are the low-hanging fruits? Can we start with climate change, so that we can get some positive news? Can we have U.S. students back in China? Or can we have the Chinese consulates resume business in both Houston and Texas and the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in southwest China?

Neil Bush: One of the great blessings of connectivity is having so many thousands of students come to the United States every year. We’re a land of immigrants. I know these students aren’t immigrating, but it’s wonderful how America has taken the best of talents from all over the world. They come to this part of the world, they learn and go back to their countries, or stay and help us build our economies. There’s so much value to those students’ experiences, both U.S. students going to China and vice versa.

Wang Huiyao: I also have some examples in terms of collaboration. Texas has abundant energy and the energy cooperation between China and the U.S. is one of the big areas. Before Trump started the trade war, we saw a lot of cooperation on trade. But actually, the lack of infrastructure in Texas is detrimental to exports to China and Chinese companies could help out with infrastructure, perhaps by forming joint ventures with U.S. companies to build infrastructure. Another area could be aerospace and aviation. Which areas could promote further collaboration?

Neil Bush: I love your suggestion that we should be very open to having joint-venture collaborations. Investment in infrastructure by Chinese joint ventures with American companies to get access to these supplies makes total sense to me. You mentioned aerospace. The George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations co-sponsored an event three years in a row, called the International Symposium on the Peaceful Use of Space Technology, with a focus on health. And this organization has brought together leading space-related agencies and organizations from around the world, from Europe, France and Germany, from Japan and Russia, the United States, and the results have been pretty remarkable. The last couple of sessions were in-person in China but virtual for all those outside of China. The first forum held in Hainan was very successful in bringing people together.

I’m not sure about the privatization of space and the competitions but there are all kinds of science that can be gleaned from space-related work and that’s the kind of science that’s going to benefit humankind. To the extent that China brings something of value to that exploration and we bring something of value and the Europeans too, we should collaborate, no doubt about it.

Wang Huiyao: Regarding the investigation of the origin of the coronavirus, some say there’s more politics in it than science. What is your thought on that? How should China and the U.S. cooperate on fighting the pandemic?

Neil Bush: I am not as concerned, for example, about the origin of climate change—whether humans caused climate change or whether it’s a natural occurrence or whether there’s some combination. The fact is that there is climate change and we need to address it and there is clearly a role for the U.S. and China and all the nations of the world to lock arms in addressing it. China’s got its 2060 carbon neutrality pledge. Governments at all levels, and the private sector should be unified in their effort to do that, and I have no doubt that China would be a major player in the collaboration to try to address climate change.

The same thing rings true to me with the virus. Who cares where it originated? Whether it originated in a lab or from a bat or from the United States or from somewhere else, wherever it originated, who cares? The fact is that we have a pandemic that continues to affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all across the globe and there is a pressing need for nations to work together. Collaboration is very natural when it comes to something as big as this.

And the origins of the virus—I will put a little caveat here. I reject the idea that there was some malicious effort to release a virus that causes a pandemic—I think that is a crazy notion that there was some intent from one side or another to do this on purpose. So throw away the crazy conspiracy theories and just assume that there was an origin of some kind. It doesn’t matter where it originated. Let’s deal with it together.

Wang Huiyao: How can we go forward, given the legacy of both the President Bushes?

Neil Bush: I will start by reiterating what my father often said, publicly and openly—that the bilateral relationship between the United States and China is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. It was prescient of him to say that many years ago because it is becoming truer now than ever, given the gravity of issues that we face as humans on Earth.

I would further say that given the U.S. economy, our GDP and our individual wealth, China has been a huge shot in the arm and our biggest partner in the world of globalization. So the United States has been a beneficiary of trade, as imperfect as it is.

This trade relationship has benefited our country tremendously, and there is no doubt that China has been an enormous beneficiary of our trade relationship as well. As we’ve had more and more cultural and student exchanges, there have been millions of Chinese visitors to the United States. They all happily go home to China. It’s not like there’s something restraining them from getting back to their homes.

The reality is that we benefited tremendously from this bilateral relationship, so the past to me is what we should look at to predict the future. The future is going to be even better. And we’ve come into this kind of crazy time where China’s rise all of a sudden is recognized by politicians as a threat to the United States. Once we can get over the hurdle that China doesn’t represent a threat to our national security, our economy and our freedom or basic way of life, then through dialogue we can establish better understanding and more cooperation.

So I pledge to continue to work with our team at the foundation to do whatever I can, to help speak the truth and shed light on this very important relationship in a way that hopefully will allow for greater collaborations across the board, not only on all major issues, but on basic things that are taking place day to day. Our governments at all different levels should be having meetings to better understand one another, to put ourselves in the other guy’s shoes, to create a better, more peaceful and harmonious world.

(Reported by Wang Enbo and Zeng Nai)