Yu Maochun, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s chief China policy and planning advisor, was interviewed by the Voice of America on November 12. He said that in the absence of a fundamental change in the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), there is no reason to change the philosophy and approach to China policy that has been rethought in light of its behavior. “No matter who is president, he is after all the president of the United States, and he must consider the interests of the American people. This is the consensus of both parties in the United States,” Yu Maochun noted. The following is the full text of the interview.
Q: Is there Trumpism? If so, what are its characteristics?
The Trump administration is no exception, and it carries with it the most distinctive policy direction (of) the decades (since). So, Trumpism does exist, and it is mentioned very loudly.
Specifically, first, the most important element of Trumpism is America First, which is the policy direction that President Trump has been steadfastly pursuing from the beginning of his campaign to his four years in office. America First means that the United States puts America’s interests first in all of its international and domestic policies. This does not mean that the United States is unilateralist and goes its own way, regardless of the world, because this is impossible. The United States is a pivotal nation of global importance, with political, economic, military, and cultural ties to the entire world. It simply means that in a time of globalization, we should formulate policies with America’s own interests in mind first. Because the influence of the United States on the world is very profound and far-reaching, and it plays a very great role in maintaining the existing international order, the beneficiaries of maintaining the existing world order are not only the United States, but also the whole world, so a policy that prioritizes the interests of the United States benefits not only the United States, but also the whole world.
The second point is that we have a principled realism in our foreign policy, with an emphasis on principles. There are several aspects to the principles of this administration, the first being the most fundamental principles, the so-called “First Principles. There are many approaches, many policies, but let’s not forget what is fundamental to the founding of the United States, what is the ultimate goal of what we want to do. We recently (2019) established the Commission on Unalienable Rights to emphasize that the most fundamental beliefs of America’s founding guide our domestic and foreign policies. This includes human rights, liberties, and especially individual freedoms, which are reflected in America’s domestic and foreign policy.
Another point is that we will not abandon our fundamental principles in the formulation of our policies, and we will never be monopolized or dictated to by special interest groups. In successive U.S. administrations, the reason for the deepening suspicion of the American people towards U.S. policy is the very significant influence of U.S. special interest groups and foreign agents on the formulation of U.S. policy. For example, Wall Street, former senior U.S. officials and politicians who are now working as agents of the Chinese Communist Party, have had a tremendous influence on the formulation of U.S. policy toward China. This administration, by adopting a principled realism, has basically eliminated the influence of these special interest groups and foreign agents in the formulation of China policy. I was there and I had a very deep impression of this. It’s selflessness that makes you fearless, and it makes you see very cutting-edge and very bold China policies like Secretary Pompeo’s because they’re not controlled and operated by special interests.
On the NATO issue, we are not only emphasizing the issue of payments by NATO members, we are emphasizing even more the need for NATO members to find the First Principle, the reason why NATO needs to continue to exist. And in terms of the resolution of the North Korean issue, we are not indulging in some of the ineffective procedures of the past, like the Six-Party Talks, where we asked where the root cause of North Korea’s nuclear weapons lies, so we abandoned the Six-Party Talks and negotiated directly with Kim Jong-un, greatly reducing the role of China as the middleman. These are all very principled approaches, that is, we emphasize the basic principle, which is the number one principle.
Thirdly, we attach great importance to the international credibility of the United States. The current administration is an administration that does what it says it will do, unlike many previous U.S. administrations. The reason that doing what we say we will do is one of the most important features of the Trump administration is because we want to restore America’s global credibility. Even though many countries say they don’t like this or that about Trump, the reason they don’t like it is simply because this administration has restored the global credibility of the U.S. government, which makes them uncomfortable. For example, multiple U.S. administrations have campaigned on moving the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, and no one has done it; this administration has done what it said it would do. And on issues like ISIS and other terrorist groups, on issues like Iran, we have done what we said we were going to do, not only in our campaign platform, but also in our implementation, and ISIS has been tormenting the world for years, and successive U.S. administrations have vowed to address it, and the Obama administration failed to do so, and the Bush administration failed to do so when it opposed Al Qaeda, and now we have beaten ISIS to the punch. It’s basically gone. In the case of Syria, in the case of Iraq, we take effective measures, and we do what we say we’re going to do. Syria kills people with chemical weapons, then we strike Syrian military installations. The Russians intervened there, then we stopped Russia and Syria from making trouble there without mercy. That’s saying we’ll do it.
Also, successive presidents have tended to say one thing and do another, and Congress has passed many controversial and consequential bills about China and about the rest of the world that, while reflecting the will of the American people, have been largely unsigned by American presidents. The current administration is different, and President Trump is a man of his word. We say we want to preserve the freedom of Hong Kong, we say we want to preserve the freedom and democracy of Taiwan, and President Trump does not hesitate to sign all the bills that Congress passes. That’s credit. That’s something that is rare in American history. So this is an administration that does what it says it’s going to do; an administration that is going to restore America’s credibility around the world. That’s why he has the support of more than 10 million more voters than he had in the 2016 election, so he’s a president who is loved by many Americans. These are some of the more specific definitions of Trumpism.
Q: Will Trumpism continue to exist after President Trump leaves the White House? If so, why?
Yu Maochun: Of course it does. The reason is because Trumpism has a very strong vitality. Where does this vitality come from? Because the American people have seen that the policies he has adopted have resulted in unprecedented economic growth, an overall increase in U.S. power, and a restoration of U.S. credibility around the world, essentially no one is laughing at U.S. promises. Credibility is not built on rhetoric, not on a long process of negotiation, but on American resolve and strength. Although the style of this president is not one that many people would agree with in its entirety, the United States has become a pivotal country again. When an American president says something, the world listens. When President Obama said to the Russians, I’m going to set a red line with you, you do something in Syria, we’re going to take action, the Russians didn’t take Obama seriously at all, and he didn’t keep his promise. Well the current president is different, what the American president says, all the other people who are running roughshod over the world are going to pay attention again. That’s why America’s prestige is growing, and that’s why his vitality will continue for a long time. Because it’s based on more solid principles, on ideas, on having a policy structure, not on an ad hoc measure or policy, so he will have a very significant impact on U.S. domestic and foreign policy.
Q: What is the place of China policy in the Trump foreign policy?
Yu Maochun: China policy has been at the top of the agenda in this administration. If you look at the Trump administration’s greatest achievements decades later, one of them is clearly the current administration’s leadership in the world in strategically redefining Communist-ruled China. This redefinition is one of the greatest contributions of the current administration.
That definition is the abandonment by the United States of the very unwise practice of playing the so-called China card. For decades, since the Nixon administration, the United States has essentially played the China card only as a means of gaining other, more directly American interests, such as defeating the Soviet Union, helping the United States withdraw troops from Vietnam, or constraining North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. Now, we’re not playing the China card to get another strategic objective, we’re playing the China card to get another strategic objective, we’re playing the China card to get another strategic objective, we’re playing the China card to get another strategic objective. So China is no longer a passing phase in U.S. strategy, we define China as the most important element of U.S. security strategy, and that’s why we released the “U.S. National Strategy” document at the end of 2017, which makes it very clear that the Chinese threat is a very important part of the national threat to the United States. Another point is that our China policy has abandoned illusions, abandoned engagement-centered policy.
The other point is that we have abandoned the illusion that our China policy is engagement-centered. The engagement-centered policy toward China has one basic idea: it has always been that real progress can be achieved through change within the CCP. The result is that the CCP, through its engagement policy, wants to change the United States and even the world. It was a disillusionment. So we are now abandoning the engagement-centered response and replacing it with a conceptual rethinking, an abandonment of the very dangerous policy approach of “seeking common ground while preserving differences” that has characterized China’s policy since President Nixon. “Seeking common ground while reserving differences” is a superficially high-sounding but actually self-destructive concept. What is “common ground” for common interests and “differences” for what? “The “difference” is the conflict and difference between the two countries with fundamental principles, such as human rights, social system, political system, etc. The current government has basically abandoned that policy. The current administration has largely abandoned that policy. Secretary of State Pompeo’s speech at the Nixon Library in July made that very clear.
Thirdly, this administration has clarified the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people, the simple but important notion that the Chinese Communist Party is not the same as the Chinese people. Because our contact with the Chinese government is one thing, and our contact with the Chinese people is another thing. The CCP does not represent the Chinese people, which was a very prominent point in Secretary Pompeo’s speech at the Nixon Library.
These are fundamental conceptual changes in our policy toward China. There are also different ways of doing it. First, we base our commitments on a distrust of the CCP, but require the CCP to verify them on a case-by-case basis, the so-called Distrust And Verify. This is different from the U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which in the 1980s was Trust and Verify. The Chinese Communist Party is basically dishonest on the Hong Kong issue, on the domestic human rights issue, on the South China Sea issue, and so on, so we have to trust and verify the Chinese government.
The second point is to adopt the principle of reciprocity in bilateral relations, the so-called Reciprocity, for example, if you expel our journalists, we will also impose certain controls on your journalists.
In the past, when there were any insurmountable problems between China and the U.S., the Chinese side always emphasized the need for strategic dialogue, negotiations, and high-level interaction between leaders, because they didn’t want to solve the problems at all, but mainly wanted to stall for time and turn big issues into small ones. In fact, the fundamental problem has been solved by nothing. We are now trying to minimize these long and meaningless strategic dialogues, cocktail parties, and banquets and focus on concrete solutions.
Another change in the way we engage is transparency and openness in our bilateral relations. Why is that? Because the consequences of not doing so were severe. After the epidemic, we learned a bitter lesson and realized that the epidemic happened because many people around the world believed the Chinese Communist Party’s dishonest statements and practices at the beginning, so if we had known about the situation from the beginning, the world would not have allowed the epidemic to spread so far.
On the Xinjiang and Taiwan issues, and especially on the Hong Kong issue, in many ways we hope to engage in diplomacy with the CCP in a more frank and open way. Gone are the days of closed-door conversations and secret behind-the-scenes deals through intermediaries.
Another point is that we have also emphasized sanctions in the way our China policy works. For example, in the past, under the framework of the China policy, the CCP did many, many things that violated human rights, and we basically did not respond adequately, but now more than a million Uighurs in Xinjiang have been imprisoned and brutally oppressed, and on the issue of Hong Kong, it used the National Security Law to abolish Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, and we have taken merciless sanctions, especially against those senior officials who were directly involved.
Q: What is the ultimate goal of Trump’s China policy?
Yu Maochun: The ultimate goal is to protect the continued existence of democracy and freedom around the world against authoritarianism and dictatorship. This may sound very general and conceptual, but it’s really important. Because the Chinese Communist Party has long exercised control over the Chinese people, it has many of the organizational and implementation methods of the Communists, and in the last decade or so it has had very strong technological capabilities. Now, because of China’s economic power and international power, as well as its technological growth, it wants to control not only the Chinese people, but the whole world. This can be reflected in things like Huawei, like 5G. China is going global, so that global freedom and democracy are under great threat. So it’s not exactly a confrontation between the United States and China, it’s a challenge by the Chinese Communist Party to liberal democracy around the world. We’ve recognized that more and more countries around the world have more and more in common with the United States, and they recognize the global nature of the Chinese challenge.
Q: Some experts argue that President Trump does not have a strategic approach to China policy and only wants a trade war, that Secretary Pompeo’s goal is to overthrow the CCP, and that other officials are pursuing reciprocity. Your opinion?
Yu Maochun: It’s actually completely wrong to look at it from the outside looking in. Looking at it from the inside will give you a completely different perspective. Every national leader has his own style of working. President Trump is a leader from a business background, and he has decades of leadership experience. One of his successes is that he can formulate general policies to stabilize the situation, and in terms of specific policy operations, he can let his talented subordinates make the best use of their own government’s departmental functions and functions. For example, at the press conference, several reporters asked the President, why didn’t you speak directly to the Democratic governor of Washington State, why didn’t you just call and address the epidemic? President Trump said, I don’t want to call him, I don’t like him, so I have no reason to call him. But my vice president is dedicated to this issue, and he calls him and gives him the necessary problems, and I never stop the vice president from working with him. That’s the way the president does things. The same principle applies to China policy. President Trump has a policy bottom line, he maintains a strategic communication so that there is no direct confrontation between the two countries, he has a channel of communication with Xi Jinping, but with a big sense of commonality, he has his Secretary of State who is setting foreign policy under him playing the full role of his administration, he has his Secretary of the Treasury doing his part, he has his Secretary of Defense doing his part, so that everybody’s strategy in China is the same. On the issue, there is no disagreement on the major policy concepts I just mentioned. It’s just that there is a different division of labor among the various functions of the government in terms of approach. The State Department is the main architect of U.S. policy toward China, but every major policy is endorsed by the President and reflects the will of the U.S. government, not the will of an individual. To overemphasize the role of the individual in overall China policy is to scratch the itch.
Q: In an interview with former Ambassador Lord, he gave a lot of credit to Trump’s China policy, but he believes that Trump’s China policy should not be a machete across the board, but a scalpel should be used to make a more careful distinction. What do you think?
Yu Maochun: It’s easier said than done, not that we don’t want to make a distinction, but the biggest difference between dealing with China’s challenge to the world and the Soviet Union’s challenge to the world is that the U.S.-Soviet confrontation was very clear and distinct. The Soviet Union and the United States led two different worlds. Unlike China, China is inextricably tied to the free world that it wants to monopolize. The free world has a lot of loose places, a lot of open places that the CCP can exploit, so it’s hard to do it the scalpel way. WeChat, for example, is neither a particularly bad nor a good app. The reason it is so influential is that it has essentially no competition in China (the Chinese government has banned all American social media), is backed by a government monopoly that has created a monopoly, and Chinese (private) companies are in a position where they have no choice but to cooperate with the Chinese government. Therefore, if WeChat is allowed to control a large portion of the personal data of American users, it will have an incalculable impact on the national security of the United States. So what do you use to do this without a one-size-fits-all approach? There are a number of practical problems with the actual operation. Certainly I was surprised to hear Ambassador Lord’s praise of the current U.S. administration, because I’ve seen some of his criticisms be very harsh, basically across-the-board negative. So I’m relieved but surprised that you say that he still has a dichotomous view of the current administration.
Q: But Ambassador Lord believes that the one-China policy implemented by eight U.S. administrations should not be broken on the Taiwan issue.
Yu Maochun: On the Taiwan issue, the Chinese government is now gradually forcing us to think very deeply about this issue. For example, we used to believe that China’s “one country, two systems”, and the most important laboratory of “one country, two systems” is Hong Kong, and to some extent, many people believe that the Chinese Communist Party’s “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong is actually a model for Taiwan. But the model of Hong Kong has completely lost its effectiveness. So it’s not that we’re adopting a strong or moderate policy towards Taiwan, but what China is doing, in many ways, is actually forcing us to adopt a more realistic kind of response, and we need to have a clearer understanding of that.
Q: Can you take an inventory of the results of the Trump administration’s policy toward China that is so different from what it has been in the past?
Yu Maochun: The fact that Trump is so different from previous administrations actually has a lot to do with a phrase that China used to say, which is “moving with the times. This is not necessarily a policy towards China made by Pompeo himself, by Yu Maochun himself, or by several other people in the back room. In the U.S., all parties are basically united in their understanding of the CCP. I have yet to hear any substantive criticism of the Trump administration’s China policy from either Senate Democratic Leader Schumer or House Democratic Leader Pelosi. The U.S. Congress has passed basically unanimous votes on China-related legislation, especially on Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang, so the China policy is not that we are doing anything different than before. In this regard, we have put a lot of things forward and systematically organized them, instead of saying that we are just an emotional reaction, as some Democrats have attacked the current administration, which we are not. Our greatest achievement has been a fundamental change in policy philosophy.
Q: Do you think the goals set by the Trump administration on China policy have been achieved?
Yu Maochun: Although the policy concept is successful, the task is not yet complete. For example, there are many difficulties in the reciprocity approach. If China expels U.S. journalists in China, we should also expel Chinese journalists in the U.S. according to reciprocity, but it’s actually not that simple because there is a huge gap between the two countries in terms of the functions and definition of journalists. Most Chinese journalists in the United States are not real journalists, they are propagandists, united front work, specializing in reporting the dark side of the United States, strictly speaking they are not journalists, nor are they members of the news industry, so there are a lot of difficulties with this. The other thing is that there is a global coalition of perceptions of the Chinese threat that is forming, which is not yet complete, and it would certainly be better if there were four more years of the Trump administration.
Q: A lot of the criticism of Trump is that he’s not maintaining relationships with U.S. allies, he’s destroying them, which seems to be a big perception gap from what you’re saying.
Yu Maochun: This accusation is completely unfounded. The United States does have alliances around the world, and these alliances are based on values. For example, the largest U.S. alliance is between the U.S. and NATO, and the U.S. is actually the largest supporter and the largest financier of NATO, and the U.S. is basically the leader militarily. But we need to reposition NATO, which was founded in 1949 primarily to deal with the Soviet threat. Where is there a Soviet threat in Europe now? Russia is a threat, but it’s not really a threat. It’s a regional threat, not a global threat. So we need NATO allies to take a new look at the mission and the mission of NATO. Now many NATO allies want to be with us and feel that China is a very important threat. On China, we have always been multilateral, never unilateralist, so there is no basis for such accusations.
In Asia and elsewhere, too, but we are not asking them to join to form a new military organization. Any alliance is formed on the basis of a basic philosophy, and now that this basic philosophy is in place, almost all countries feel that the growth of Chinese power poses a great threat to their countries. Some people are not willing to come out and confront China directly, and they want to take a middle way, a compromise, which is becoming increasingly unworkable. In this situation, we are not trying to break up alliances, but rather to strengthen them, such as in Northeast Asia, where the trilateral alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is very important. If South Korea were to enter into an alliance with China militarily and geopolitically, it would be detrimental to the existing allied organizations, so we will strengthen the U.S.-Korea alliance, primarily to preserve the existing alliance, not to allow the strength of the alliance to be weakened by the influence of the Chinese Communist Party. So we’re not going to be unilateralist.
Q: Last question, after President Trump leaves the White House, which of the Trump administration’s China policy philosophies and modus operandi are likely to be reversed and which are irreversible? For example, Trump announced his withdrawal from the World Health Organization, his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and now President-elect Biden has made it clear that he wants to reverse those policies. In your view, which of these ideas and approaches you’ve just inventoried are irreversible?
Yu Maochun: I think the policy philosophy I just mentioned is basically irreversible. It’s not just about what strategy the U.S. has, but the CCP is proving every day that our re-conceived ideas are correct. And these policy ideas are not based on our subjective will but on reality. You just talked about the next president. I still don’t know who will be in the White House next, so I don’t completely agree with you that the next president has to be a Democrat, but of course many people think so.
Q: If a Democrat is in the White House, do you think these philosophical approaches are also irreversible?
Yu Maochun: There will be no fundamental change in the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party, and therefore there will be no change in these philosophical guidelines. For example, in the behavior of the World Trade Organization, not only is the current administration unhappy with the WTO, but the Democrats under Obama have had eight years to fight with the CCP over the WTO. So I don’t think these policies will change. As for withdrawal or not, it all depends on the substance of the bilateral debate. No matter who is the president, after all, he is the president of the United States, he must consider the interests of the American people. If the WHO goes against the interests of the American people, there is no doubt that whoever is president will reconsider whether it is worthwhile to stay in the WHO, just like the Human Rights Council under the United Nations. There is this bipartisan consensus.
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