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Diplomacy
OpinionComment
Chi Wang
Chi Wang

Opinion | For US-China relations to improve, diplomats have to step back from Twitter

  • The finessed language of diplomacy has given way to hashtags and zingers between US State Department hawks and China’s ‘wolf warriors’
  • Diplomacy rarely succeeds when executed over a microphone

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Stephen Case
Chi Wang
I first began following US-China diplomacy after a chance meeting with V.K. Wellington Koo – one of the most skilled Chinese diplomats of the 20th century. He represented China at the Paris Peace Conference after the first world war, where he advocated that China be treated as a major world power. He was among the founders of the League of Nations and the United Nations. He served as China’s ambassador to France and then Britain during the second world war.
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He became ambassador to the United States in 1946, and it was there that I met him after I arrived as a student in 1949. Koo had known my father, and invited me to join him for lunch at the ambassador’s residence in Washington. It was my first encounter with a diplomat, and would leave a lasting impression, inspiring my career in US-China relations.

Through my work, I became familiar with the major forces involved in directing the US-China relationship. For three years, I taught Chinese to aspiring diplomats at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. My students included the future US ambassador to China, Stapleton Roy. Through my work at the Library of Congress, I briefed prominent legislators on China, including Mike Mansfield, Henry Jackson, Charles Percy, Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole, and current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On the Chinese side, I met ambassadors and foreign ministers from both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China.

During those days, diplomacy was limited to a small, elite group. The American and Chinese diplomats of the time were among the most capable diplomats in their countries. They studied the history of the relationship and were well versed in each other’s language and history. Wellington Koo received a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate from Columbia University, and The Washington Post noted in his obituary that he was “as fluent in English and French as he was in Chinese”.

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Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says

Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says
Those were the Cold War years. The US and the Soviet Union strongly distrusted each other and, while misunderstandings at times brought the two countries to the brink of war, more frequently it was the strength of the diplomacy between them that enabled common ground to be found and tragedy to be averted.
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