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OMAHA — It's not unusual for politicians to flee that notorious den of intrigue known as Washington, D.C., in favor of the homespun appeal of Middle America.
It is somewhat out of the ordinary, however, for a foreign diplomat to ditch Embassy Row for the flyover states. Yet, there was Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong earlier this month venerating the "heartland" and happily pressing the flesh in appearances here and in Kansas City, Mo. "You can feel the warmth," he enthused in an interview with USA TODAY.
Zhou's two-day Midwestern swing, which included speeches to business groups, local media interviews and even an incongruous stroll amid a flock of penguins, was all part of China's emerging campaign to overhaul a remote and sometimes threatening image. The ambassador's affable style also reflects the growing sophistication of Chinese diplomacy as a once-insular nation adjusts to a newly prominent role in global affairs.
In Washington, China is routinely assailed for allegedly unfair trade practices that erode entire American industries. For Zhou, ignoring the attacks isn't an option; stable relations with the United States are essential if China is to complete its transition from doctrinaire communism to free-wheeling free market. So since taking over China's premier diplomatic post last year, he has reached out to lawmakers and China watchers in a charm offensive that is slowly paying dividends.
"Chinese diplomats, in their relations with the Hill, have gone from a D- to a B+," says Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who chairs the House U.S.-China Working Group.
But it is on his carefully managed swings beyond Washington's Beltway that Zhou's message finds its most receptive audience. Appearing before local Chamber of Commerce groups, Zhou escapes the capital's controversies and basks in the welcome befitting a deep-pocketed buyer representing 1.3 billion fellow customers. At a private dinner for Zhou at Kansas City's Carriage Club, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder set the tone. "Let's do a lot of business together!" he cried.
Cultivating free trade
Since April 2005, Zhou, 60, has visited about 20 states in conjunction with a U.S. Chamber of Commerce initiative aimed at cultivating support for free trade among small and midsize businesses. An additional four stops are penciled in for later this year.
On these trips, he is sometimes quizzed on human rights and his government's failure to protect foreign companies' trademarks and patents. But the questioning is generally friendly and far less probing than what he experiences in Washington. In Omaha, a local television reporter asked Zhou a series of routine questions about his trip. But she seemed genuinely excited only by the prospect of the Omaha zoo receiving a Chinese panda.
"Here, people are not very familiar with the specifics. Normally they ask more general questions," Zhou said later. "(But) this is very valuable. So long as there's an audience, I feel it serves my purpose."
The Midwestern welcome mat for Zhou included being chauffeured from the Kansas City airport in a gleaming Rolls-Royce sedan driven by Leon Trammell, a member of the U.S. Chamber's board of directors. Later, Zhou toured a collection of Chinese art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum before heading to Omaha for dinner in a striking venue: a glass tunnel beneath the Omaha zoo's shark tank. (Earlier, he strolled past the tongue-in-cheek warning "Beware of Attack Penguins" for an icy photo op with the flightless birds.)
Early hardship
The VIP treatment contrasts with Zhou's modest origins. He was born more than 6,000 miles from the American heartland in coastal Jiangsu Province eight days after the U.S. dropped its second nuclear bomb on Japan. His father was a middle-school teacher and his mother a homemaker.
The invading Japanese army was particularly brutal in this part of China; Chinese scholars say Japanese soldiers butchered up to 300,000 civilians in an infamous massacre known in the West as the Rape of Nanking.
As the Zhou family fled the invaders, his two brothers fell ill and died. Like many Chinese who lived through that period, the war and its aftermath remain a defining moment for him. Trying to connect with one Kansas City audience, Zhou cited the home state battleship that hosted the formal Japanese surrender, the USS Missouri.
Hardship didn't end with the war. While being driven to an appointment, Zhou discusses the early 1960s when Mao Zedong's ill-advised call for a "great leap forward" resulted in widespread famine. In Shanghai, where Zhou lived at the time, people rose at 3 a.m. to wait in line for scarce provisions only to find many others had gotten there even earlier.
Measured against those unforgiving years, today's China — with its world-class infrastructure and roaring economy — seems "incredible," he says quietly.
Zhou joined the diplomatic service in 1970, as China was consumed by the chaotic Cultural Revolution, but escaped its final tumultuous years studying in England. He returned home in 1975 to become a government translator, working at one point for Deng Xiaoping, who launched China on the "reform and opening" path that made it an economic titan.
As China prospered, Zhou climbed the diplomatic ladder. By the time he was named ambassador to the U.S. last year, he had more than a dozen years of experience in the USA as well as ambassadorial stints in Australia and Barbados. His first job outside China, and his first Washington embassy stint, coincided with the decision by the Carter administration to extend diplomatic recognition to China's Communist government.
Expanding trade ties
Now, he represents a country whose economic muscle, after more than a century of turmoil and stagnation, is beginning to match its sheer size.
In Nebraska, local business leaders are eager to expand their modest trade ties with China. Last year, the state's (largely agricultural) exports to China totaled $111 million, just a sliver of its $3 billion total foreign sales. Sales to China rose 26.1% compared with the previous year, trailing a 29.7% overall export gain.
The executives who gathered at the downtown Qwest Center to hear Zhou and a U.S. Chamber panel of China experts were motivated by the prospect of tapping a market that is expanding at a breakneck pace. About half of the audience of roughly 150 already had made at least one trip to China.
"Certainly, it presents a unique opportunity to sell into this country and bring revenues back to our state of Nebraska," says John Batcher of Fat Brain Toys, a maker of educational products.
Trade complaints on both sides
Even those committed to the Chinese market, however, complain of opaque procedures, difficulty finding sufficient management talent and flint-eyed negotiations.
"Very few companies have figured it out and mastered this environment. You see some very big companies, who've been there 20, 25 years, still grappling with some very basic issues," says Charles Martin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.
Zhou has his own complaints about the U.S. In response to gripes about the yawning trade deficit, he says China wants to buy more American-made goods, but the Bush administration won't sell.
The top Communist Party official in Jiangsu Province recently tried to buy a U.S. helicopter to ferry government officials above the region's terrible traffic but was turned down because of regulations barring advanced technology exports to China. Those restrictions limit the USA to an 8% share of China's $200 billion in annual high-tech imports, he says.
In private conversations, Zhou is friendly and more relaxed than normally scripted Chinese officials. But on stage, that persona doesn't always come through. The need to sound foreign policy themes that are important to China's leaders sometimes muffles the message he wants to send to Americans.
In Omaha, for example, Zhou meandered through a review of his government's policy on Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. The issue is of paramount importance to Chinese leaders, but not to Nebraska exporters.
Likewise, in Kansas City, Zhou's prepared remarks ran aground when he indulged the traditional Chinese fondness for enumeration and recited, one by one, the "12 achievements" of an obscure U.S.-China trade committee followed by the "14 measures" Beijing recently adopted to protect intellectual property. By the time all 26 items had been ticked off, the audience sat non-plussed.
Yet at other moments, Zhou unveils a dry wit, teasing a local cameraman doing double duty as a reporter that he should be getting "two checks" and noting General Motors' success in China by quipping: "GM is doing very well ... (pause) ... much better than they are doing here."
The veteran diplomat also is candid about the difficulties China faces. A widening gap between rich and poor, pervasive environmental maladies and public disgust with official corruption leave Chinese leaders uneasy. "We are in for a period of social instability," Zhou says bluntly.
Leaving the stage to warm applause, Zhou earns a "good job" and a supportive pat from visiting Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Later, in a brief interview, Hagel praises Zhou for breaking free of the Washington cocoon and seeking a first-hand look at public opinion.
But there's only so much that Zhou's road trips can accomplish. Hagel, who warned of the emerging danger of protectionism in introducing Zhou, says existing congressional disquiet over China could worsen if the U.S. economy falters in the run-up to the November elections.
"It's going to get much uglier," Hagel says. |
