by Susan Rice
Even as we directly confronted the various areas of competition and concern with China, President Obama and I believed that expanded cooperation was not only important but possible to achieve. From 2013 to 2017, I held numerous meetings in Washington, New York, and Beijing with my Chinese counterpart, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, as well as China’s foreign minister, senior military leaders, economic advisors, and party chiefs. These discussions were invaluable to forging progress on a wide range of issues. I traveled five times to Beijing as national security advisor, making it a habit to visit in the summers to prepare for upcoming summits between our presidents.
On each of my solo trips to Beijing, I was greeted with senior-level access and exceptional protocol arrangements, which to the Chinese are particularly important. Each time I arrived, whether in Beijing or Shanghai, the Chinese would shut down the highways and provide a police-escorted motorcade, which is usually a gesture reserved for visiting heads of state. I met for hours on each visit with my Chinese counterpart and other senior leaders. They hosted elaborate lunches and intimate dinners and, most importantly, I was always accorded a meeting with President Xi Jinping in a cavernous state room in the Great Hall of the People. These roughly forty-five-minute meetings, which began with brief comments before the international and Chinese press, were meant to underscore the importance the Chinese assigned to the U.S.-China bilateral relationship and their understanding of my proximity to the president of the U.S. The Chinese also always sought to ensure that their leaders were accorded the utmost respect, proper protocol, and unfailing security in the U.S., so they treated me with the expectation of reciprocity.
While the Chinese tend to emphasize form, Americans like to focus on substance. On each of my visits, I came with a detailed set of topics that I did not just want to discuss but to make real progress on and, ultimately, reach agreement. On areas of divergence, my aim was to deepen mutual understanding, plainly lay out U.S. concerns, explore ways to narrow our differences, but always to make clear where we would not bend and what the adverse consequences of their oppositional policies might be.
My first visit to China as NSA came at a low point in bilateral relations. In asserting a new style of bold, unchallenged leadership, President Xi had tried to constrain U.S. and international flights over the South and East China Seas. Weeks before my arrival, there had been a near disaster when a Chinese fighter jet buzzed a U.S. P-8 reconnaissance plane flying in international airspace, coming within thirty feet of the U.S. aircraft. In my meeting with Chinese military officials, I insisted, “We will continue to fly where we choose in international airspace,” even if close to Chinese territory (which they hated). But I also revived an earlier proposal by President Xi that we reduce mutual risk by negotiating formal confidence-building mechanisms (CBMs)—rules to govern our encounters in air and sea to minimize the potential for unintended conflict. We were later able to sign detailed CBMs.
On the same trip, I emphasized the importance of increasing pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program and of coordinating policy approaches between the U.S. and China. We subsequently established and sustained a bilateral dialogue on Northeast Asia, which helped shape our shared thinking about future contingencies in the region.
I also stressed the value of the U.S. and China leading the international community on climate change by each setting ambitious new targets for the reduction of carbon emissions, and thus smoothing the path to the Paris Climate Agreement. This was an initiative that Secretary Kerry and White House counselor John Podesta conceived and ably pursued. With pushing and prodding, we were able to get the Chinese to agree to announce our joint targets and unprecedented collaboration during President Obama’s Beijing summit with Xi in November 2014. Similarly, I pressed collaboration between the U.S. and China on global health, Ebola, nonproliferation, development cooperation, nuclear security, the campaign against ISIS, and peacekeeping—all areas where, ultimately, we were able to make progress. Our efforts were driven by President Obama’s conviction that, “When the U.S. and China are able to work together effectively, the whole world benefits.”
In other areas, confrontation was more appropriate than cooperation. This was true, of course, on key aspects of the economic relationship as well as China’s aggressive and unlawful assertion of its claims in the East and South China Seas. The U.S. continued to insist on our right to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows. We underscored that policy in 2015 by resuming regular “freedom of navigation operations.” On these missions, the U.S. Navy would sail within twelve nautical miles (the legal nautical boundary) of land features—occupied by China or other countries—in order to emphasize that we do not recognize the legality of their claims. President Obama also made plain to President Xi that any Chinese effort to take or build on land occupied by a U.S. ally would activate our treaty obligations regarding mutual defense and could escalate into U.S.-China conflict. That message was received and respected, at least through the duration of the Obama administration. At the same time, the Defense Department made deliberate enhancements to our Pacific posture to improve our readiness to defend U.S. interests and that of our Asian allies and partners.
One of the biggest disputes in the U.S.-China relationship involved China’s cyber-enabled theft of American intellectual property to give their companies a commercial advantage. For years, the Chinese government, military, and private entities have hacked into U.S. companies’ proprietary systems and stolen information that they have then used for competitive gain. Over years, this unabated theft has cost U.S. companies billions of dollars, despite Justice Department indictments of Chinese military personnel and vigorous demands that China stop.
The issue is not about spying; frankly, we know (and they know) that we spy on each other as best we can through cyber and other means. In my business, espionage is fair game. What is utterly unacceptable to the U.S. is cyber theft of private company information for commercial gain. China had grown adept at stealing American companies’ intellectual property and using it to make advanced products that compete against our own.
By August 2015, when I visited Beijing alone for the second time as NSA, the U.S., as my dad used to say, had already had “a bellyful” of their behavior. Diplomacy had not yielded results. Repeated warnings had failed. I came to Beijing with a strong and clear message: If China doesn’t stop stealing our stuff, we will sanction you on the eve of President Xi’s first state visit to the U.S., which was scheduled for late September. I repeated our position privately at every opportunity, including more diplomatically with President Xi. We meant it and, as I reminded my Chinese interlocutors, the president had already signed an executive order giving us the tools to swiftly sanction any foreign actor for malign cyber deeds.
I delivered our points clearly. Knowing how sensitive the Chinese are to any potential embarrassment, much less serious turbulence surrounding their president’s foreign travel, I hoped our message had been received. So, at first, I was chagrined to read, as I was leaving China, an unsourced Washington Post article reporting that the administration was preparing to impose sanctions on China. I hate all leaks and was pissed in principle. In this case, specifically, I worried initially that the Chinese would perceive bad faith on our part by going to the press before our final efforts at diplomacy had played out. Yet by the time we were wheels-up from Beijing, my concern about the leak quickly and cynically turned to appreciation for the prospect that the article might serve to amplify the seriousness of my message.
Within a few days of my return, the Chinese system kicked into gear. Worried that sanctions would upend Xi’s visit, China asked to send a very high-level delegation immediately to Washington to try to resolve the issue. The proposed visit was scheduled to start on September 9, the precise day we had planned internally to announce sanctions against Chinese individuals and entities. Inside the White House, we had a robust debate as to how to proceed. I argued that we shou
ld wait to see what the Chinese delegation had to say before pulling the trigger on sanctions. We could still implement the sanctions before Xi arrived if we were unsatisfied. Several of my colleagues wanted to sanction China preemptively and then double down with additional measures if China’s envoys failed to meet our demands.
Though we all doubted these discussions would yield any progress, President Obama decided that we would hold off on sanctions and receive the Chinese delegation. Lisa, Avril, and I, though not originally in agreement on when to levy sanctions, came together (as always) to press the divided agencies to fall in line behind the president’s decision to give diplomacy one more serious try.
The Chinese side, led by Politburo member and senior security czar Meng Jianzhu, met with Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI director James Comey, before coming to see me in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. Their posture was respectful, but they recited the usual complaints about U.S. misdeeds and denied Chinese bad behavior. I laid out our terms pointedly: absent a groundbreaking new understanding to halt their commercially motivated cyber theft, we were headed to a bad place on the eve of Xi’s visit. I outlined the terms of what we needed in any potential agreement.
Later, I held a private follow-on conversation with another member of Meng’s delegation—Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui, my former Chinese counterpart during my first year at the U.N., with whom I had always had a collegial relationship. I told Yesui that, “We are really at a critical point. We are not bluffing, and I have no room for maneuver. If you don’t agree to our proposal, we are in for a rough ride.” Following our discussion, our staffs met for over thirty-six hours of nearly continuous negotiations at the White House and Chinese embassy. In the end, they reached an understanding, subject to ratification by Beijing and President Obama.
Nonetheless, early Saturday morning, after an all-night negotiating session and as the Chinese delegation was flying home, I received an alarming report from my team that the Chinese side had torpedoed the deal. At once, I called the Situation Room and asked them to rouse the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai. After initial protests from his staff that he was unavailable, we were connected. I lit into him, telling the normally very calm but now quite agitated ambassador, “You need to fix this mess by Monday morning or be prepared to explain to your president why Washington will be his worst state visit to date.”
By Monday morning, the Chinese had reconsidered, and we had a deal that satisfied our concerns. To the shock of informed observers, the two presidents announced on September 25 in the Rose Garden: “Neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.” The U.S. side also made plain that, if we saw evidence that China was violating the deal, we stood ready to impose sanctions.
This agreement between the U.S. and China largely held through the duration of the Obama administration, and seemingly until U.S.-China relations deteriorated markedly under President Trump, when aggressive theft resumed.
In our time, the U.S. Intelligence Community and the private sector consistently reported to us that they detected a marked reduction in Chinese commercial-related cyber theft (if not its complete elimination), assessing that continued suspicious behavior largely fell in the gray area abutting espionage. We also worked with China to translate our bilateral agreement into multilateral understandings at the G20, U.N., and other international venues to induce more countries to adhere to cyber norms. Progress on tough issues like cyber theft and currency manipulation, the unprecedented cooperation we achieved in a range of new areas, plus the growing personal ease between President Obama and President Xi, enabled us to leave the potentially antagonistic U.S.-China bilateral relationship on a stable footing for our successors.
Vividly, I recall President Obama’s last trip to China in September 2016, when President Xi, as host of the G20, took the floor at the conclusion of the summit in Hangzhou to give one final, lengthy statement. Before the assembled leaders of the world’s most powerful countries, President Xi warmly praised President Obama for helping guide the world away from the brink of financial collapse in 2009, for his wisdom as a leader, his contributions as a valued partner to each of them on all issues of global consequence, and as a man of vision, patience, and integrity. It was a remarkable tribute from a competitor, as unexpected as it was personal and seemingly genuine.
Xi’s comments also stood in sharp contrast to how our visit to Hangzhou began. When we arrived on Air Force One, the Chinese—who by now we knew to be notoriously heavy-handed and imperious hosts—were at their finest.
First, a tarmac dispute between the airport authorities and the U.S. Secret Service over who would drive the mobile staircase up to the side of the plane resulted in the Chinese refusing to allow the full-length staircase to be used by the president to disembark. With time wasting, the U.S. side decided to take matters into their own hands. Unwitting of any issue, and by nature unpretentious, the president walked off the plane using the short internal steps from the base of Air Force One, which made for a less grand descent than is customary. The traveling White House press corps erupted in outrage as if hell had just frozen over and started their reporting of the trip heralding a monumental snub by the Chinese of President Obama.
Their frenzy was heightened when a six-foot-three-inch goonish Chinese security guard abruptly body-blocked me as I tried to pass under a tape barrier to join the president in his limo waiting plane-side. Initially, I plowed ahead without paying him much heed, but he kept stopping me. When my explanation of who I was and where I was going failed to satisfy the guard, my lead Secret Service agent, Tom Rizza, nearly came to blows with my Chinese barrier. To ensure I reached the vehicle before the motorcade moved out, I imagine Rizza spoke into his wrist giving his fellow agents a heads-up, Point Guard moving to join Renegade in the Beast.
All this drama happened under the noses of our traveling press corps assembled beneath the plane’s wing, reinforcing their commitment to the narrative that we were being bullied even before the first meeting began. It was a bogus story, not least because it was one of Xi Jinping’s staff who recognized me and helped me join the president in his vehicle, overruling the ignorant local security guard. And “stair-gate” was an equal exaggeration, having nothing to do with official intent on either side but rather a staff-level skirmish. Still, our press had already decided that the visit was off to a bad start, but in this case their overheated reporting failed to sabotage it.
Through eight years of deep engagement with the Chinese on various issues, I found that with vision and tenacity, the U.S. has the capacity to broaden areas of cooperation with China while at the same time directly confront our profound differences with the appropriate combination of fortitude, firmness, and care. China’s power and global influence will continue to grow. So too will its transgressions and provocations. In the last few years, China has intensified abuse of its own citizens and doubled down on construction in the South China Sea and its pursuit of nefarious trade and technology policies. How the U.S. manages this dynamic—alone or with allies, with confidence and calm, or with fear and fatalism—will substantially define the global landscape in the twenty-first century.
“Susan, do you have a few minutes to stay back and talk privately?” I heard John Brennan asking me, as fellow members of the PC quickly departed the meeting we had just concluded on a busy day in early August 2016.
John, a tough, loyal, burly man of Irish descent who had devoted his whole career to keeping America safe by ably defeating terrorists and other adversaries, was one of my favorite colleagues. Sometimes irascible, but always a straight shooter with a generous heart, I trusted John’s judgment and experience implicitly.
We had the Situation Room to ourselves. He pulled a paper out of his loc
k bag and said without drama, “We have strong evidence that Putin himself is trying to interfere in our election. This is not a low-level operation. It comes from the top.” He showed me the smoking-gun report and detailed the credibility of its sourcing.
I took a couple of seconds to collect my thoughts and said, “We gotta go upstairs and tell the Boss.”
On the way into the Oval, we rounded up White House chief of staff Denis McDonough. Ferial directed us back to the president’s private dining room at the end of a small hallway off the side of the Oval Office. Obama, sitting at the table reading, looked up. Brennan repeated the same message he had given me and handed the president the report. The president read over the paper and instructed us to convene a select group of Principals as soon as possible.
From that moment in early August through Election Day, President Obama and a tight circle of senior officials wrestled with how to counter a Russian threat that far exceeded anything we had seen to date. Russia had previously hacked into U.S. government and private entity systems. It had spread disinformation. Since the Cold War, it had employed propaganda and other means to influence U.S. elections. It had messed with elections in European countries, but we had not previously experienced this particular variety of Russian cyber espionage in the U.S., which combined hacking into party systems, official propaganda, social media manipulation, and attempts to penetrate state electoral systems. The Russians coordinated all these hostile elements in a concerted effort to interfere in a U.S. presidential election. Nor had we before possessed such strong evidence that the order came directly from the top. For weeks, my stomach churned with a low-grade, intermittent nausea.
It was not immediately clear what Russia’s motives were. A range of possibilities included: 1) to help Trump; 2) to discredit Clinton; 3) to hamper Clinton’s ability to govern effectively if elected; 4) to sow domestic discord and distrust in the results of the election; 5) to discredit democracy globally; or, 6) all of the above. Regardless of the motive, what worried us most was that Russia might gain access to state electoral systems and manipulate the voter rolls by excluding voters or adding ineligible voters, or even try to falsify the vote count in strategic jurisdictions. We also feared that Russia might not only steal and release hacked emails, as they had done with the Democratic National Committee and later would do with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal emails, but that they might also doctor stolen messages to embed false, derogatory information and make it look real.
