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David Lampton

With the death of former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, both China and the wider world have lost a great leader.
Zhu took personal risks for better US-China ties. He believed that productive Sino-American relations were good for China and for the world.
He was a global leader before China had achieved its current great power status. In mid-1990, when I was president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, our organisation invited Zhu, then Shanghai mayor, to the United States. Several colleagues and I spent nearly three weeks travelling to several US cities with him.
This trip occurred about a year after June 4, 1989 – the first high-level visit to the US by a Chinese leader after the trauma and bloodshed of Tiananmen Square.
Making this journey at that time was a risk for him. He could have been publicly humiliated by the withering criticisms of Americans outraged by the June 1989 tumult. If he was too strident defending his government in America, he would fail in his mission to improve ties with US citizens and leaders. On the other hand, if he was perceived back home as a weak defender of China’s dignity, he would be vulnerable to nationalistic backlash.


American praise of him could be construed by his domestic detractors as criticism of China’s central leadership. He did not want to appear to be the darling of the West when his superiors in Beijing were prohibited from contact with US officials because of Washington’s post-Tiananmen sanctions. Zhu candidly hinted at his quandary, saying: “I wish they [the US press] would quit calling me ‘China’s Gorbachev’ – it’s killing me in China. I am not China’s Gorbachev, I am China’s Zhu Rongji.”
Leadership greatness is anchored in character. Our rides together during his extended 1990 US trip, subsequent opportunities to meet him one on one and with groups over subsequent years and my conversations with other world leaders about their interactions with Zhu left me several indelible impressions about his character and qualities of leadership. The trust that Chinese citizens and foreigners alike placed in Zhu rested upon his pragmatism and cosmopolitan vision, inquisitiveness, humour, capacity to communicate across cultural divides and ability to convey reality as he saw it.
‘In the end, we are all mixed systems’
On the evening of July 7, 1990, Zhu and his delegation of five other mayors from some of China’s largest cities, plus the venerable former mayor of Shanghai Wang Daohan, landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. As we rode into New York City, the illuminated bridges spanning the East River suddenly popped into view, as did the twin towers. He asked me, “Tell me. You have something here called the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. What is it? What does it do? Why was it established?”
I inadequately explained that the Port Authority was a multi-state/municipality special-purpose jurisdiction to plan, develop and operate infrastructure and promote region-wide economic and social development. Showing his cosmopolitanism and practical nature, he said: “That is important. Though you are capitalist, you need planning. And we, though socialist, need a lot more market. In the end, we are all mixed systems.” He was right.
Congress ‘reminds me of my barber shop’
Get a person laughing or seeing things from your angle of view in the first two minutes of speaking with them, and you are 99 per cent of the way to mutual understanding. Zhu was a master at that.
In my experience, Zhu never spoke with a group before first asking who was in the audience and what they cared about. He almost never read a speech. Also, unlike most Chinese leaders, he did not live in fear that someone in the audience would ask an embarrassing question.
One day, as we headed for Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress, he was undaunted by the prospect of meeting Nancy Pelosi, a junior House member from California. She was calling for protecting the visa status of Chinese students then studying in the US and tying most-favoured-nation status for China to its human rights behaviour. Heading towards that meeting, I cautioned the mayor that he would get what he might see as hostile, unfriendly questions, which I don’t think he needed me to tell him. I explained that he should not take personal offence at the way Congress operated. It would all be very un-Chinese. Members of Congress would convey more moderate views privately to him, then go out and lambast China.
All this he understood, and more. As we left the last meeting of that day on the Hill, he said: “Well that wasn’t as bad as you warned. Reminds me of my barber shop. People come in, people go out, everyone talks over everyone else. Yeah, like my barber shop.”
The world’s Zhu Rongji
My experience seeing many members of Congress interact with Chinese leaders is that they generally identify a legitimate concern, then come up with a proposed remedy or to-do list for their Chinese interlocutor. Such was the case in April 2002 – about a year before the US invasion of Iraq – when he was urged to support the US invasion of Iraq to forestall what the George W. Bush administration argued was Baghdad’s drive to acquire nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Zhu replied: “I cannot agree with you on the Iraq issue. You can’t produce solid evidence that Iraq has nuclear weapons. To destroy a country at will is very dangerous. The whole Arab world will fall out with you. We don’t hope to see this.” Nearly two decades later, the US still lives with the consequences of not heeding this advice, as well as repeating the error with respect to Iran today.
While Zhu Rongji was China’s Zhu Rongji, he also was the world’s Zhu Rongji. Reflecting on him and the current US-China relationship shows how much the world has lost in terms of a leader and a constructive global approach.


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US-China relations

Zhu Rongji’s death a reminder of what US-China relations have lost

New York mayor David Dinkins (centre right) is presented with a hand-painted fan from Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji (centre left) in the Blue Room of City Hall in New York on July 10, 1990. Photo: AP

The death of Zhu Rongji, China’s economic reformer

Former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji during his visit to Hong Kong in 2002. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Zhu Rongji was premier of China from 1998 to 2003. Photo: Robert Ng

Former US president Bill Clinton (right) and former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji appear at a press conference in April 1999. Photo: AFP

As mayor of Shanghai, Zhu Rongji (right) leads an economic delegation to Hong Kong in June 1990. Photo: Robert Ng

Zhu Rongji pictured in 1996 with Anwar Ibrahim, who remembered the Chinese premier as a “good friend”. Photo: AFP 

The 11 key achievements of China’s ‘iron premier’ Zhu Rongji – in his own words

Visitors admire the Pudong New Area, Shanghai’s booming financial district, on September 26, 1998. Photo: Reuters

Chinese president Jiang Zemin (left) discusses the contents of work reports with premier Zhu Rongji during the second day of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 6, 2000. Photo: AFP

(From left) Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa and AIG CEO Maurice R. Greenberg meet with members of the Chief Executive’s Council of International Advisers at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on November 19, 2002. Photo: Handout

Quo-wei Lee (left), chairman of the Hong Kong stock exchange, and Philip Wong Yu-hong (right), vice-chairman of the Stock Exchange, accompany Zhu Rongji, mayor of Shanghai, to visit the stock exchange in June 1990. Photo: SCMP

US president Bill Clinton (R) and Chinese premier Zhu Rongji stand at attention on April 8, 1999, during the state arrival ceremony for Zhu at the White House in Washington. Photo: AFP

Chinese premier Zhu Rongji delivers his government’s work report to the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 5, 2000. Zhu issued a strong warning on corruption, saying the battle against corruption should be waged at the highest level. Photo: AFP

Zhu Rongji’s legacy: how the late premier reshaped state firms, Pudong and China’s economy

Opinion

China Opinion

News

China

Politics

The current state of US-China ties shows the importance of leaders like Zhu, who was pragmatic, cosmopolitan and committed to constructive engagement


The current state of US-China ties shows the importance of leaders like Zhu, who was pragmatic, cosmopolitan and committed to constructive engagement.


Zhu Rongji

Diplomacy

United States

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Zhu Rongji’s death a reminder of what US-China relations have lost

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The current state of US-China ties shows the importance of leaders like Zhu, who was pragmatic, cosmopolitan and committed to constructive engagement

The current state of US-China ties shows the importance of leaders like Zhu, who was pragmatic, cosmopolitan and committed to constructive engagement