464 pages PublicAffairs Publication Date: May 2004 Hardcover ISBN: 1586481363

 This summary is available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

May 2004
China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia
By James R. Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley

James R. Lilley's family life and career have been entwined with China's fate since his father moved to China in 1916 to work for Standard Oil. Lilley spent much of his childhood in Tsingtao, worked for thirty years with the CIA in the region, and eventually became the top U.S. diplomat to Taiwan, South Korea, and China. China Hands traces the Lilley family's service in Asia as businessmen, soldiers, intelligence officers, and diplomats.

AEI senior fellow James R. Lilley helped formulate U.S. policy in Asia through four decades of covert and diplomatic operations. His son Jeffrey Lilley has worked as a journalist and teacher, writing for publications including Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and the Far Eastern Economic Review. This summary is written in James' voice.

China's importance can best be explained in an historical context and on the basis of individual experience, insignificant as the latter may seem at first glance. China matters because it is both big and old. When China implodes because of self-indulgence, complacency, or failure to keep up, others rush in and colonize, split, and demean it. When it rises, as it is doing now, some genuflect, others arm themselves against expansion, and still others join the Chinese parade. China may continue to grow, but it can also become mired in faulty decisions, inequalities, and the sheer size of its problems. Whatever happens, all of us will be affected, as China has had a special role influencing the psyche of America--fed by missionary accounts and persistent political exaggerations.

Context is crucial. The Nixon-Kissinger breakthrough did not usher in modern China. Dynasties have struggled with modernization for centuries, yet the twentieth century saw change accelerated with China rushing forward at a breakneck pace. Foreigners tried to control the process but were caught up in the swirl of forces, which swept them along. China changed radically in this short period in ways its earlier revolutionary leaders had not predicted.

Then there is the human experience. There were individuals who engaged China, families that tried to come to terms with the enormous changes taking place. A strong feeling for China grew inside these people; it could be sentimental, arrogant, or practical. But did they make a difference?

Superficial exposure to China has hurt, leading individuals to demonize or glorify it in the extreme, and set aside normal due diligence practiced elsewhere. But single-minded deeper immersion has also distorted the China experience and has caused equal damage.

 The Lilley Family in Asia

This then is the story of American men in the twentieth century who were drawn to China, captured by events, and who tried to work with and against the China they saw. One ended up embittered, one was destroyed, and one moved on. These men were like dots on a Chinese landscape painting, but these dots were changing, expanding, and shrinking.

Frank W. Lilley, the first entry on the scene, was an oilman at 26 Broadway, the home of Standard Vacuum Oil Company in New York. He was handsome, young, and restless for change. He was part of the first period of our engagement. He was protected by his country with extraterritorial rights; he was committed to the culture of his oil company and was challenged by his work with Chinese commercial agents, including the difficulties of a language that was remote from him but fascinating in its endless subtleties and usages. There was violence and turmoil all around, but he was inured. The foreigner felt he was a little king in a small community in a vast country.

These heady days effectively ended in 1937 when the Japanese invaded China. Japan humiliated and restricted the other foreigners and disrespected and despised the Chinese. Earlier invaders, with the exception of the British in the 1840 Opium War, had admired and adopted Chinese culture and civilization. War between the foreigners and the Japanese finally broke out in 1941. Chinese civil war followed the conclusion of the anti-Japanese war, and chaos ensued.

The second Lilley, young Frank, a brilliant achiever who was religious and idealistic, returned to China as a military officer in 1945. He had read extensively about China, spoke Chinese, and remembered fondly his childhood there. He returned, however, to find his beloved China smashed, disintegrating, full of brutality, corruption, and cowardice. His ideals were shattered, and he died tragically in 1946.

China became united under the victorious communists, the foreigners were kicked out, except for Big Brother, and a period of hostility between the Chinese and Americans ensued.

The third Lilley, James, the author, returned to China during this period of hostility. The Chinese communists were the enemy and had to be stopped. They needed to be changed to a more docile China we could live with. Paramilitary action, agent penetration, and covert propaganda were some of the tools we used to accomplish this mission, but none worked. China was slowly moving away from the Soviet model, but no thanks to our efforts.

The fourth era of a rapprochement with China really began for us in Hong Kong in 1968 when, despite the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in China and the drifting of dead bodies to Hong Kong, we detected clear signs that China wanted to reengage the United States, not so much out of affection for us but because they were concerned about the aggressive power of the USSR.

Events moved quickly, and our lives were changed dramatically. I shoehorned my presence into the first U.S. mission to China in 1973 and met two men who were to change my life-Jim Schlesinger and George H. W. Bush. Schlesinger got me to China despite vigorous objections from the State Department, and George Bush made me part of his team as he became vice-president-elect in 1980. There then followed a period of constructive engagement for me in Taiwan, South Korea, and China as head of our mission in each country. We shored up Taiwan, and Taiwan opened up to China. We supported the rise of democracy in Korea, and we tried to sustain the important relationship with China despite the trauma of Tiananmen Square.

The story is still unfolding--China is both a partner and competitor, Korea is torn by political differences that are their own interpretation of democracy with Korean characteristics, and Taiwan is trying to change the rules of the political game while China fumes and alternately threatens and seduces.

I still sense the ghosts of the two Lilleys who preceded me, who served where I have served and who wrote down their early impressions. This book tries to describe our experiences, and I hope it can explain fairly what happened and why we did what we did. Did we make a difference, or are we like a stone dropped in a pool that sent out ripples but in the end failed to change the pool's original form?

At the end of her brilliant book Stillwell and the American Experience in China, Barbara Tuchman says, "China went her own way as if the Americans had never come." Standard Oil is now back in China producing and selling oil, our navy regularly visits Chinese ports as symbols of friendship and deterrence, and Christianity flourishes in underground and in patriotic churches. China is now in charge, but we are inevitably a part of its future just as China is part of ours.

 This summary is available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.