By Edward Wong
BEIJING: They waxed nostalgic about secret negotiations in Beijing, a Cold War alliance against the former Soviet Union, and the first visit to the United States by Deng Xiaoping, the deceased Chinese leader.
They mentioned some touchy issues, including tensions over Taiwan and Tibet.
But in the end, the American and Chinese leaders who gave a speech after speech in Beijing on Monday afternoon chose to focus on China's stunning economic growth and its place in the world today, and how that might be different had relations between Washington and Beijing taken a different turn 30 years ago.
"There is no more important diplomatic relationship in the world than the one that has grown between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America," said Jimmy Carter, the former American president.
Carter's speech opened a two-day conference to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the United States and China. Carter was president when the American government and restored diplomatic relations with mainland China on Jan. 1, 1979. It happened around the same time that Deng adopted the policy of Reform and Opening Up, transforming the Chinese economy into the juggernaut that it is today. Now, the two countries do nearly $400 billion of annual trade.
Cross-border capitalism was well represented at the conference: Mary Kay, the American cosmetics maker, is a co-sponsor of the event, and some attendees on Monday received a pink cosmetics bag with bottles of samples.
The American and Chinese officials who helped engineer China's reentry into the world were in attendance, sitting at a long table at the front of the room. Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, were at the center.
On the American side, the names were familiar: Henry A. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, all former national security advisers, and a handful of other officials and diplomats.
The Chinese were represented by, among others, Qian Qichen, former vice premier of the Chinese cabinet; Tang Jiaxuan, former foreign minister; and Li Zhaoxing, also a former foreign minister.
The speeches began at 1:20 p.m., after the guests had taken their seats at the head of the room, yellow flowers stuck into their jacket pockets.
"In the past three decades, thanks to our joint efforts, the ship of China-U.S. relations has moved forward, braving winds and waves," Qian said.
Those winds and waves did not go unmentioned. In his speech, Tang referred to the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1999. He also noted some of the current obstacles to better relations between the two nations, saying the two sides need to "properly handle issues that concern China's core interests such as those related to Taiwan and Tibet so as to safeguard the larger interests of China-U.S. relations."
Other officials talked of how the two nations are becoming ever more closely intertwined. They cited statistics to prove their point: 145 pairs of sister cities, 10 percent of undergraduates at Yale University studying Chinese. Clichés were batted around by leaders from both countries without any irony - they mentioned over and over, for instance, the phrase "harmonious society," a term the Chinese Communist Party often invokes for propaganda purposes.
Brzezinski gave a laundry list of problems in the world that he said would benefit if China stepped forward to help the United States find solutions: the global financial crisis, climate change, Iran's nuclear program, disputes between India and Pakistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the speeches ended, the conference attendees mingled in a reception hall where wine was served. There, it became clear that for all the talk of common ground between China and the United States, the Chinese government wanted the American guests to understand in no uncertain terms its stand on some very important issues. Prominently placed on a table were piles of government-published books with titles like "The Historical Status of China's Tibet."
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