East and West are like two extremes that mutually repel one another, as all the while each side tries to find out what makes the other tick. Through centuries of exchange and conflict, the two sides have continually tried to understand one another, and since Marco Polo a series of Western "Asia hands" and "China watchers" have fed the Western appetite for the Orient of their imaginations through travel writings, novels, and memoirs. Even someone like James Lilley, who was born in China and has spent a lifetime as a front-line diplomat in US-China relations, feels the temptation-the provisional first title of his memoirs referred to his experiences in Asia as an "odyssey."

What is this book about really? The term "odyssey" evokes notions of danger and mystery. The Taiwanese publishing company, knowing what its readers are looking for, decided to give the Chinese edition the provocative subtitle, "The never-before-revealed inside story of US-China-Taiwan relations." Veteran ROC diplomat Frederick Chien, meanwhile, who knows Lilley well, describes the book as representing the political perspective of "America's second generation in China."

Indeed, Lilley is not shy about sharing his political opinions in these memoirs (which, by the way, were in fact penned by his son Jeffrey, who is the Moscow bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review). He repeatedly expresses, for example, his view that Taiwan is not a "problem," but a "success story," and argues that seeing Taiwan in this way best serves American interests.

Since retiring from diplomatic life, James Lilley has been at the prestigious American Enterprise Institute. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

An imaginative realist

James Lilley was born in the Chinese city of Qingdao, Shandong Province, in 1928, the son of an employee of the American oil company Mobil. He lived in China until he was 12, personally witnessing Japan's full-scale invasion of that country. As an adult, he went into intelligence work, and was posted to Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Laos, and China, specializing in collecting China-related information. He made the transition to diplomatic work thanks to his personal connection with former president George Bush. When Bush became vice-president after Ronald Reagan's electoral victory in 1980, Lilley was named as director of the Taipei office of the American Institute in Taiwan, making him the top US representative in the ROC.

Lilley's childhood experiences left him with certain idealistic attitudes and an emotional attachment to China; his intelligence training made him pragmatic. These two sides of his character come out in his memoirs in his recounting of the "Wallabee" program.

In 1975, at the height of the Cold War, with relations between Beijing and its former "loyal ally" Moscow at a low ebb, Lilley proposed that the US and China cooperate on monitoring Soviet nuclear tests in Central Asia from posts in Xinjiang. He named his project after his father-in-law, Waller B. Booth. Given that the US and China had only a few years before been fighting over Vietnam, this was a bold plan. But it was one that also fit in with America's international strategy and its desire to improve relations with the PRC. After several years of negotiations, agreement was reached at the highest levels in 1979, and two monitoring stations were set up in Xinjiang. This marked the start of US-China cooperation on gathering intelligence on the USSR. It is very valuable for us to now have a firsthand account of this CIA secret from the originator of the plan.

Yet, despite having proposed this bold cooperative plan, Lilley still advised that the US be cautious in its relations with the PRC. Thus he strongly criticized the terms of the 1978 agreement reached between US and China for establishing formal diplomatic relations between the two countries as a clumsy agreement in which the US made excessive concessions. In a letter to Bush, he wrote that Beijing would judge America only by its actions, not its words, and that it was a mistake to send "amateurs" to negotiate the deal with the "professionals" in China. He felt that the agreement was a complete defeat as far as Taiwan was concerned.

Arms sales to Taiwan

Another surprise with regard to Taiwan in the memoirs comes with Lilley's description of events surrounding the so-called "August 17 Communique." This was an agreement reached between the Reagan administration and the Chinese in which the US promised to limit the quantity and quality of arms sold by the US to Taiwan. Lilley describes to readers how the Reagan administration, in an internal memorandum signed by the president, interpreted the agreement in such a way that it seems to have been actually in Taiwan's interests.

Claims for the existence and importance of such a memorandum were first aired a 1999 book on US-China relations, About Face, by James Mann, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

But Mann's claim remained unproven, and he could provide little detail about the content of the memorandum. Lilley, on the other hand, reproduces the entire text. One key passage declared that the US willingness to reduce arms sales to Taiwan would depend entirely and absolutely on China sticking to its promise to resolve differences with Taiwan peacefully. Another said that the main consideration in the quantity and quality of arms sold to Taiwan would be the extent of the Chinese threat, and that in both quantitative and qualitative terms the US would endeavor to help Taiwan maintain a defense capability at a level proportionate to China's national power. These previously secret passages can explain the genuine US policy toward arms sales to Taiwan over these many years.

Like a spy novel

In 1989, Lilley was named US ambassador to the PRC, reaching the high point of his diplomatic career. But then came the democracy movement and the June 4 crackdown.

In a report to the State Department in late May of 1989, Lilley predicted that the Chinese government would forcefully suppress the democracy movement. But the report was itself suppressed, and did not come to the attention of President Bush. It was only later, when Bush chided Lilley about the latter's "failure" to foresee the crackdown, that Lilley realized his opinions had not reached the highest circles. In his memoirs he describes this incident as the greatest disappointment of his diplomatic career.

Turning to the granting of political asylum to Chinese human rights activist Fang Lizhi, Lilley describes the events as being like the plot of a spy novel. Fang and his wife had taken refuge in the US embassy in Beijing, and they were stuck there for a year. There was constant speculation about how the US was going to get them out of there safely, and one reporter even claimed that Lilley was going to have a Halloween party at which everyone would wear a Fang Lizhi mask so that Fang himself would have a chance to escape in the confusion. Lilley tells this episode with great detail and humor.

Lilley was not amused, however, by an interview that Fang gave to NBC television after-with great difficulty-he was taken to London. In that interview Fang criticized President Bush for having a double standard on human rights, tough on the Soviet Union but easy on China. Lilley writes that he could never forgive Fang for criticizing the Bush administration like that.

The mystery of life

Such detailed descriptions make the reading of James Lilley's Memoirs a pleasure, but perhaps the part of the book with the greatest human interest is Lilley's description of the roots of his feelings toward China. He does not mind admitting to having only a weak understanding of China as a youth, and also poignantly describes his deep affection for his late elder brother Frank.

He writes: "In the end, then, it's not China but the death of my eldest brother, which has been the greatest mystery to me.... [I]n choosing to study China and work in Asia, I remained linked with Frank in tangible ways, ways that made it seem as if he were not far away."

Frank, like James, was born in China, and had a deep emotional attachment to the country. He found it hard to understand and accept the tragic circumstances that befell Asia and was filled with inner spiritual turmoil. In 1946, at the age of 26, at a US military base near Hiroshima, Japan, he shot himself.

Frank's death had a profound impact on Lilley's life. From Lilley's memoirs, one can see that Frank had a great influence on Lilley's childhood ideas about China, and that Frank remained for his younger brother a symbol of virtue and idealism. Lilley has in many ways been following a trail marked out by his idealistic elder sibling.

In these memoirs, Frank appears as a spirit constantly hanging over Lilley's life. Whenever Lilley faces a critical life decision, he always asks himself: What would Frank have done? If a gifted individual like Frank chose to end his own life, then how can I choose the right path?

Lilley also evokes Frank to close the memoirs. Whereas Frank was deeply pained by the suffering endured by China in the war, James says that he has always tried to avoid romanticism and sentimentality in looking at China, and thus developed a kind of detachment: "I studied Chinese language, culture, history, and literature, but I remained wary of them at the same time. I did not want to be destroyed the way Frank was by becoming too attached to anything or anyone."

He turned this into a whole outlook on China: "One manifestation of what I call my 'objective' approach toward analyzing China is that I did not feel guilty about the historical role of foreigners in China. The American guilt complex over wrongs done to China is played upon by the Chinese...." He warns in his book against overly sympathizing with or identifying with China's own interpretation of itself, saying that this could lead one to overlook China's own errors and failures.

With a life that has been itself a page in world diplomatic history, perhaps a pragmatist like James Lilley can serve as an example for those on both sides of the Taiwan Strait who are now in charge of cross-strait relations. These highly readable memoirs can also be instructive to young people who hope for a career in international relations.