Word: lilley
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Mao Zedong's Communist revolution completed its sweep of the mainland in 1949, the oft-asked question in Washington was who had "lost" China. Former American spy, diplomat and straight shooter James Lilley argues in his sweeping memoir China Hands that this historical puzzler is a red herring: America never had China, and the very idea is counterproductive. To influence China, America first has to respect that the vast land has its own interests and ways. Lilley knows. He was born in Qingdao, the son of an American oil executive, and China has been the center of his life...
...Lilley was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) right out of Yale, and his dozen postings included Laos, Hong Kong and Beijing, where with Mao's consent he was the first U.S. intelligence attach? to Communist China. Lilley has little positive to say about the CIA's activities in Asia, and many of his tales end in tragedy or farce, such as the incident in which a group of visiting U.S. congressmen debriefed a senior agent one afternoon in Vientiane only to stumble upon the same officer later that night laying naked on the floor of a bar, braying...
...Lilley is a self-described pragmatist?no surprise coming from someone who was Washington's top diplomat in both Beijing and Taipei?and he says the U.S. influences China best not through military might but through a combination of economic muscle and human interaction. "Our effort should be to bend China, not break it or change it fundamentally," Lilley says, quoting the report he filed at the end of an explosive two-year ambassadorial term in Beijing that began with the Tiananmen massacre. "Deng Xiaoping's new China was tainted because the blood of Chinese workers and students had been...
...line. That he did not cross it, and indeed vowed not to change the status quo, was a victory for diplomacy and pragmatism-and the climax to weeks of frenzied lobbying and pressure by the U.S. "I don't think anybody [in Washington] considers [Chen] reckless," says James Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to China. "He's a very calculating lawyer who's got an agenda and who tests the waters...
...Mathis-Lilley...