Cover by Benjamin Hurd
Kenneth Lieberthal is professor of political science and William Davidson Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan. He was special assistant to the President and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council from 1998 to 2000.
J. Stapleton Roy a career ambassador, was ambassador to Singapore from 1984 to 1986; ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 1991 to 1995; and ambassador to Indonesia from 1996 to 1999. He was assistant secretary of State for Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2000.
Leonard Woodcock was an extraordinary man who spent the first decades of his career working to improve the lives of America's autoworkers and the final decades constructing an enduring US-China relationship that would serve the vital interests of the citizens of both countries. He passed away at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the age of 89 on January 16, 200
1, of pulmonary complications. The son of a machine worker, Woodcock played a key role in developing the United Auto Workers (UAW) into one of America's largest industrial unions. He joined the union in the 1930s and rose through its ranks to become president in 1970, when Walter Reuther died in a plane crash. Later that year Woodcock led a 67-day strike against General Motors Corp. that produced major concessions. His accomplishments overall in the UAW were legendary. They include negotiating major health and safety improvements, voluntary overtime, a dental plan, cost-of-living and pension protections, and measures against discriminatory practices.
President Carter asked Woodcock in March 1977 to lead a diplomatic mission to Hanoi on the issue of US soldiers missing in action and then in July to become Chief of Mission in Beijing. Woodcock accepted the Beijing posting on the condition that he have a mandate to negotiate full normalization of relations with China before the next presidential election. Carter agreed, and Woodcock took up the challenge.
Woodcock succeeded in Beijing. He personally negotiated key aspects of the normalization package directly with Deng Xiaoping in the fall of 1978 and engaged his superiors in Washington to shape the American negotiating position. With the establishment of full diplomatic relations in January 1979, Leonard Woodcock became America's first ambass ador to the People's Republic of China.
After he left Beijing in 1981, Woodcock continued his involvement in US-China relations for two decades. He constantly sought to educate the leaders of each country about the realities--and complexities--of the other. He understood that China is not monolithic, and he encouraged American policymakers to take serious account of this political reality.
Woodcock also toiled tirelessly and without fanfare to tackle difficult problems when they arose. Working closely with the State Department, just five months after the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre he traveled to Beijing to try to find a way for Chinese astrophysicist and human rights leader Fang Lizhi, who had found sanctuary in the US Embassy, to leave the country. During that trip he met with Deng Xiaoping in the last meeting that Deng had with any foreign visitor.
Throughout the 1990s Woodcock actively supported annual renewal of China's Most Favored Nation trading status, spending many hours making the rounds on Capitol Hill to keep the US-China trade relationship on track. This effort reflected his core belief that trade on an equal footing benefits the people of both countries. He arranged in 1991 for a Chinese buying mission that purchased $130 million worth of American cars, spread equally among the Big Three auto makers.
Leonard Woodcock took his message that good US-China relatio ns serve the fundamental interests of Americans and Chinese to leaders and citizens in both countries. He felt strongly, too, that the United States must help China's economy move forward before Americans can expect significant political changes toward a more democratic political system there.
Leonard Woodcock was a unique man: a very skilled negotiator, tough but quiet, he was willing to dispense wise counsel but never sought compensation for his advice. This style made him effective but also hid much of the record of his accomplishments from the public eye. He remained an internationalist long after that went out of fashion in American labor. His wisdom, integrity, and political acumen will be sorely missed.
--Kenneth Lieberthal
Arthur W. Hummel Jr.
The many friends and admirers of retired Ambassador Arthur Hummel were saddened by news of his death on February 6, 2001. Born in China of American missionary parents, Art Hummel retained a lifelong personal and scholarly interest in Asia. After joining the Foreign Service, he rose rapidly to become one of his country's most senior and respected diplomats. His ambassadorial posts included Burma, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China, and he was assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs durin
g the administration of President Ford. He became one of the handful of senior American diplomats to rise to the rank of career ambassador.To those who knew him, Art Hummel was the model of what a senior diplomat should be. He combined seriousness of purpose with immense personal integrity, great personal and moral courage, and a quiet sense of humor. Long before I met him, I had become acquainted with an episode in his background. As a high school student in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, in 1949, I had acquired a puppy from a family friend, the China representative of the British American Tobacco Co., a dashing British citizen named Lawrence Tipton. A long-time resident of China, Tipton had been interned by the Japanese at the outbreak of World War II. He later escaped and spent the war years with a Chinese Nationalist guerrilla troop fighting in Shandong Province. Tipton used to regale us with stories from those days, which epitomized for me the utmost in adventure and danger. Years later when, as a mid-level Foreign Service officer, I met Art Hummel for the first time, I was awed by his dignified and distinguished bearing. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that he had escaped internment with Tipton, and the two of them had shared those adventures together.
Art Hummel became a close friend whose knowledge, policy sense, and intellectual integrity represented for me the best in the Foreign Service. H e was unflinching in stating hard truths to foreigners and superiors alike, but he did so in a manner that earned respect for his viewpoint. He worked tirelessly to put US-PRC relations on a sound basis, but his perspective on China and on US national security interests was free of sentimentality. Coming as we did from similar backgrounds, we shared common interests ranging from US foreign policy in Asia to the use of computers to tame the Chinese language. Indeed, it was Art who introduced me to Chinese word processing, a skill he had mastered following his retirement.
As the US ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 1981 to 1985, Art Hummel played an instrumental role in negotiating the third of the three communiques that form the basis for the US-PRC relationship. Earlier he had participated in the policy deliberations that eventually led to the establishment of US diplomatic relations with Beijing. In this and other ways, his dedicated service made a lasting contribution to the interests of the country, the United States, that he represented so well. For me, however, Art Hummel's most enduring legacy consists of his standards of personal conduct, his friendship, and his warm human qualities.
--J. Stapleton Roy
Photograph courtesy of the National Committee on United States-China Relations
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