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Artful diplomat melts the ice overseas
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IN 1974, Deng Xiaoping addressed a special session of the United Nations General Assembly, three years after People’s Republic was recognized by the UN as the official representative of China.
In his first major diplomatic appearance overseas, Deng said, “China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one.”
Four years later, shortly after he took over leadership of the country, Deng paid a series of official visits to Japan, the United States and Southeast Asian countries, embarking on a new road for China’s global relations.
It’s hard today, after decades of miraculous growth, surging foreign investment and international prominence, to imagine a time when China was a mystery to the outside world and everyone waited somewhat anxiously to see what would happen next.
For his part, Deng was eager to learn from other countries. He encouraged high-level officials to travel overseas, to observe and to learn. In his state visit to the US in 1979, he asked then President Jimmy Carter whether it would be possible to send Chinese students to study there. Since then, America has become one of the top destinations for Chinese students. At the end of 2013, about 235,000 Chinese students were studying in the US, a 21-percent increase from the previous year.
When Deng visited Singapore in 1979, he said China should learn from Singapore’s experience in economic development.
“The bilateral cooperation took off and gained momentum when Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and met with then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1978, even before the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries,” Ong Siew Gay, Singapore’s consul general in Shanghai, tells Shanghai Daily. “We have since then established collaborations in various fields, taking into account the evolving developmental needs of China so as to ensure that our bilateral cooperation is continually updated and relevant.”
He cited the example of the Suzhou Industrial Park. Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, the park became a model of international cooperation in investment, technology and the sharing of expertise. Similar bilateral projects, with different focuses such as food security and sustainable development, have been set up all over China or on the drawing boards.
“A doughty little man with melancholy eyes,” former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once described Deng.
Kissinger met with Deng many times, most notably during Deng’s visit to the UN in 1974 and during his official visit to the US in 1979, shortly after diplomatic ties were established between the two countries.
“Reform in China was initiated by him,” Kissinger once told the Chinese media. “I had the honor of hearing him explaining it to me on many occasions. I had the honor of being able to compare what he said to me in 1974 and again in 1979 with what actually happened. Very few statesmen can say they have achieved their own predictions.”
Foreign leaders remembered Deng as a straightforward man, according to Ezra F. Vogel, Deng’s biographer. He interviewed Kissinger, Carter, former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and others who had met and talked with Deng. Many of the foreign notables told Vogel they found Deng polite and direct, devoid of excess diplomatic parlance and given to stating his views clearly.
The late American journalist Mike Wallace, who interviewed Deng in 1986, said everything the Chinese leader told him had been verified.
Little by little, China came to be known across the world and Deng was the face of that transformation. He convinced those overseas that China’s intentions were honorable and that the country could be trusted to keep its word. His vision for economic development helped encourage foreign investment, mobilize industrial modernization and eventually created what is today the world’s second-biggest economy.
(Zheng Xin contributed to this story.)
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