America's Dangerous Superstition of "Backroom Diplomacy" with the CCP: Why Does Washington Still Believe Despite Repeated CCP Breaches? [The Epoch Times Enlightenment Forum Hosted by Miles Yu] EP270

This video explores the long-standing superstition of backroom diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy toward China and its dangers. The speaker points out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has repeatedly violated both public and private commitments, yet some interest groups and China experts in Washington remain blindly committed to closed-door negotiations. The video reviews the drawbacks of the backroom model since Nixon's visit to China, analyzes the methods the CCP uses to deceive Western officials through information control and cultural misinterpretation, and calls on Washington to abandon appeasement and illusions regarding Beijing. It advocates for adhering to diplomatic principles of transparency, documentation, and verification, using the truth under the sunlight to force the CCP to change.

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Welcome to the Enlightenment Forum of the Zhiding Lecture Hall, I am Miles Yu. For half a century, a special set of rules for dealing with the CCP has been prevalent in the U.S. diplomatic community: sensitive issues should be discussed privately, Beijing should not be embarrassed publicly, face should be saved for CCP leaders, their private assurances should be trusted, and most importantly, major issues are best resolved behind closed doors. In the history of modern U.S. diplomacy, few creeds have been so deeply believed in, yet so unable to withstand the test of facts; backroom diplomacy should have been discarded by history long ago.

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) joined the World Trade Organization, Beijing solemnly promised to abide by rules and open its markets. On the South China Sea issue, it promised not to militarize the region; on the Hong Kong issue, it promised a high degree of autonomy; and on human rights, intellectual property, cyber behavior, and international rules, Beijing also made countless guarantees. And what was the result? Time and again, Beijing took the benefits first, then violated its promises, evaded its obligations, or simply reinterpreted its own commitments. Time and again, Washington received new private guarantees from Beijing, and time and again, Beijing walked away with new tangible interests. However, why has this diplomatic superstition been able to persist until today? Because it has long nourished a massive interest group, a professional class of China brokers and compradors whose status and value depend precisely on an assumption whose truth can never be verified: that just by having one more secret talk with Beijing, the CCP will become a little bit more moderate. Wall Street wants the Chinese market, Silicon Valley wants Chinese consumers and supply chains, K Street lobbying firms want clients, universities want Chinese money, Chinese students, and channels into China, think tanks need projects, consultants, and various distinguished researchers, and some outgoing officials and past politicians suddenly discover that Beijing can give them something Washington no longer provides, which is a sense of relevance. Consequently, an extremely absurd phenomenon has emerged in US-China relations: a group of Americans constantly admonishing other Americans never to offend the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, as long as there are enough prominent American figures willing to speak on Beijing's behalf, the CCP does not even need to lobby Washington directly.

This interest ecosystem has also created a group of China experts who always blame China first. In their eyes, almost any aggressive behavior by the CCP can ultimately be traced back to America's own faults. For instance, is China militarizing the South China Sea? It's America's fault for forcing them. Does Beijing constantly threaten Taiwan with military force? It's because Washington hasn't given it enough a sense of security. Is the People's Liberation Army frantically expanding its military? That too is because the Pentagon provoked an arms race. Did the CCP tear up agreements? Perhaps Americans just don't understand Chinese history. In short, Beijing always has extenuating circumstances, and Washington always bears the responsibility. This self-deceiving diplomatic tradition can actually be traced back to the beginning of the ice-breaking in US-China relations. President Nixon and Kissinger did accomplish an important strategic breakthrough back then, but at the same time, they also created a highly personalized and secretive mode of diplomacy toward China. Under this model, Beijing exercises extraordinary control over the negotiation environment, language interpretation, and even the flow of information. The major negotiations back then with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai often relied on Chinese translators deeply trusted by the CCP leadership, including Mao's personal translators Tang Wensheng and Wang Hairong, rather than fully utilizing America's own professional diplomatic translators in accordance with normal diplomatic practices. Senior CCP translators have never been mere language staff; they are political cadres who have undergone rigorous political training, are well-versed in the power operations of the party-state, and directly serve the highest leadership of the CCP. If in a major diplomatic negotiation, one side exercises overwhelming control over language interpretation, then the consequences are self-evident: tones can be adjusted, concepts can be reconstructed, meanings can be blurred, and ambiguities can be exploited—and it is precisely these ambiguities that have plagued the United States for decades.

For example, what does China actually mean? On the Taiwan issue, what exactly has the United States promised Beijing? What is sovereignty? What is merely a position unilaterally claimed by the Chinese side? And what is it that the United States has truly accepted or committed to in several key joint communiqués and successive summits? These seemingly subtle distinctions have ultimately evolved into diplomatic disputes that have lasted for generations. Therefore, no U.S. president should, within an information environment controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), close the door with the General Secretary of the CCP to decide on major national interests without competent American translators, record-keepers, and professional advisors present, and without leaving accurate and complete institutional records. The fate of a nation must never be entrusted to the personal illusions of a U.S. president who believes he has established some special relationship with the CCP leader across the table. Creating such illusions is precisely the specialty of CCP leaders; they meticulously direct every meeting—red carpets, honor guards, state banquets, paired with a few carefully selected, feignedly profound Chinese idioms—and the professional bureaucrats of the Communist Party transform themselves into philosopher-kings brimming with five thousand years of Chinese wisdom. Foreign dignitaries are often left spellbound, while the Chinese people themselves are often baffled, unable to understand why foreigners are so easily deceived. Much of the so-called Chinese wisdom packaged for foreigners is, in fact, nothing more than common proverbs familiar to the Chinese people. This scene is much like the political satire film 'Being There,' where Chance the gardener talks casually about flowers, trees, and the seasons, while a group of elites who consider themselves incredibly clever insist on hearing profound wisdom about economics, politics, and the rise and fall of civilizations. By now, the CCP has developed this absurd, Chance-the-gardener-style performance into a form of geopolitical art. Jiang Zemin used to love showing off his erudition in front of foreigners; one of his most famous performances was tirelessly reciting President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. A General Secretary of a Leninist authoritarian regime used the recitation of one of the greatest democratic manifestos in human history to prove how civilized and learned he was, while fundamentally, he was hostile to government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Xi Jinping also has a nearly uncontrollable desire to be seen by foreign leaders as a great figure of profound thought, well-versed in both ancient and modern history. Yet, among the Chinese public, he is often mocked and satirized as an overbearing yet incoherent Winnie the Pooh, and is even more famous for his constant gaffes and frequent public embarrassments. The question is, what is truly more absurd: the performances of Jiang Zemin and Xi Jinping, or the Western audiences who are actually moved by such performances? The Western obsession with the so-called 'face' of the Chinese is a manifestation of the same gullibility. For decades, Americans have been warned never to publicly criticize Beijing because Chinese culture places special emphasis on 'face,' and public criticism would make Chinese leaders feel humiliated. This claim is often packaged as a profound understanding of Chinese culture, but in reality, it is more of a condescending paternalism. The Chinese people are not an exotic modern nation that needs civilized Westerners to carefully help them save face. More importantly, the group of people ruling Beijing are not fragile, Confucian sages immersed in ancient rituals; they are officials of a Marxist-Leninist party who possess nuclear weapons, intelligence agencies, propaganda machines, and the largest military in the world. In fact, using Chinese culture to explain the behavior of the CCP completely reverses history. Marxism-Leninism has never been a part of China's cultural heritage; it is a radical ideology imported into China from the West and then imposed upon the Chinese people through the Leninist party-state machine. Its political vocabulary comes from Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong; it comes from the life-and-death struggle between capitalism and communism, and from democratic centralism, the united front, ideological discipline, and the absolute leadership of the Party. Mistaking Leninism for Chinese culture is one of the most stubborn and arrogant cognitive errors in the West.

Furthermore, closed-door diplomacy has another serious consequence: it leaves U.S. allies anxious and fearful. Whenever a U.S. president and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disappear behind closed doors, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and other American partners instinctively ask: What are they talking about? Will Washington trade away our interests? Even if the U.S. ultimately makes no concessions, the secrecy itself breeds suspicion, and suspicion and unease among U.S. allies are, in themselves, a strategic victory for Beijing. Of course, this is not to say that the U.S. should not engage in dialogue with China; two nuclear-armed powers must maintain communication, and some diplomatic negotiations do indeed require confidentiality. However, confidentiality should only be a diplomatic tool, never a diplomatic creed. The basic principles of U.S. diplomacy are exactly the opposite: be as transparent as possible, keep records, verify everything, ensure major understandings between the two sides are put into writing, have professional U.S. translators present, consult with allies, and publicly record important commitments made by the CCP whenever possible so that if they are broken, they can be publicly exposed. As for private assurances made by Beijing, they should be considered worthless until they are translated into observable, verifiable actions. Most importantly, Washington should break a decades-old bad habit: stop being so afraid of embarrassing the CCP. Sometimes, embarrassing it is precisely what is necessary.

This authoritarian regime, which spends astronomical resources blocking information, imprisoning dissidents, rewriting history, and maintaining a massive propaganda machine, has actually already told us what it fears most: it fears the truth, it fears transparency, and it especially fears the truth being made public. Sunlight can achieve what another exquisite state banquet in Beijing never could: it can raise the cost of lying, reassure U.S. allies, and strip Beijing of the space to tell different stories to different audiences. For over fifty years, too many in the U.S. diplomatic community have believed in a strange assumption: that as long as the door is closed, with no reporters, no public, and no allies watching, the CCP will suddenly become more rational, more pragmatic, and more trustworthy. But history has proven the exact opposite. In a closed room, Beijing can flatter, intimidate, sow discord, distort, make solemn vows, and promise anything; only under the sunlight must it take responsibility for what it has said and done. The CCP rarely bows to whispers in a closed room; what truly forces it to concede is bringing the truth to light, placing diplomacy under the sun, leaving deception with nowhere to hide, making betrayal pay a price, and raising the cost of open confrontation to a level it cannot bear. To deal with the CCP, whispers in a closed room cannot change it; only the truth under the sunlight can potentially force it to change. History has yet to prove the contrary.