The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2021 31 Robert Griffiths teaches political science at Brigham Young University. A retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, he lived and worked for 14 years in China, including as consul general in Shanghai from 2011 to 2014. Engagement withChina Was It aMistake? U.S. expectations may have been unrealistic, but there is much to remember and learn from our previous dealings with Beijing. BY ROBERT GR I F F I THS “ T he world cannot be safe until China changes,” Secre- tary of State Mike Pompeo said in a July 2020 talk at the Richard Nixon Library and Museum, quoting the 37th president. In the 53 years since Nixon wrote those words, China has changed in immeasurable ways, but not in all the ways the West had hoped. Indeed, Pompeo said that the engagement policy the U.S. has pursued for decades has been a failure. Was the United States wrong to have engaged China? Could things have turned out differently? In the decades following Nixon’s breakthrough in 1972, U.S. policy toward China was rooted in optimism and enjoyed bipartisan support. We knew that the payoffs for a successful relationship would be enormous for both sides, and many signs were encouraging. But history sometimes turns on bad luck, as well as policy intentions and misassessments. We were not wrong to have given the relationship a good shot, and the story has not ended. The Path Taken There was a time when if a foreigner wanted to learn about China, he or she had to go to Taiwan. I was part of that genera- tion who, in the 1960s and 1970s, learned Chinese from those who fled the mainland after defeat in the civil war in 1949. These were people who were proud of their Chinese roots, eager to preserve Chinese culture, and with whom I spent many hours trying to master Chinese calligraphy with long brush and ink stone. Life in Taiwan for young foreigners was invigorating and filled with as much fun as you can get riding an underpowered motorcycle with a date on the back. When mainland China began to open up in the 1980s, it was very exciting. Foreigners could, with a little effort, visit all the places we had read about in the history books. But even greater than the thrill of discovery was the thrill of anticipation. China was changing. What would it become? What would life be like for our Chinese friends? In the intervening years, from the 1980s to today, incredible things have happened. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. China has become the world’s largest trading nation. World-class skyscrapers, high-speed trains and scores of vast new college campuses demonstrate that when given a chance, the Chinese want the best. The collapse of com- munism as an economic and social system gave rise to all sorts of ways to find greater meaning and opportunity in life. Vast riches came for some; a materially better-off life for nearly all. Interaction with the outside world increased profoundly, and we could imagine the day when the Chinese would enjoy all the ON GREAT POWER COMPETITION TODAY FOCUS