China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia

by James R. Lilley, Jeffrey Lilley

Overview

James Lilley's life and family have been entwined with China's fate since his father moved to the country to work for Standard Oil in 1916. Lilley spent much of his childhood in China and after a Yale professor took him aside and suggested a career in intelligence, it became clear that he would spend his adult life returning to China again and again.

Lilley served for twenty-five years in the CIA in Laos, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Taiwan before moving to the State Department in the early 1980s to begin a distinguished career as the U.S.'s top-ranking diplomat in Taiwan, ambassador to South Korea, and finally, ambassador to China. From helping Laotian insurgent forces assist the American efforts in Vietnam to his posting in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, he was in a remarkable number of crucial places during challenging times as he spent his life tending to America's interests in Asia. In China Hands, he includes three generations of stories from an American family in the Far East, all of them absorbing, some of them exciting, and one, the loss of Lilley's much loved and admired brother, Frank, unremittingly tragic.

China Hands is a fascinating memoir of America in Asia, Asia itself, and one especially capable American's personal history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781586483432
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	07/06/2005
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	559,768
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

During a government career spanning four decades, James Lilley served in the CIA, White House, State Department, and Defense Department. He is the only American to have served as the head of the American missions in Beijing, where he was ambassador from 1989-1991, and Taiwan, where he was Director of the American Institute in Taiwan from 1982-1984. He also served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1986-1989. He is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

Jeffrey Lilley is a journalist. He lives in Silver Springs, Maryland, with his wife and two sons.

Table of Contents

	Note to the Reader	ix
	Prologue	xi
Part I	Growing Up, 1916-1947
1	"Where the Daisies Cover the Country Land"	3
2	Only a Memory	24
3	Americanization	35
4	An Anguished Cry	47
Part II	Intelligence Officer in Action, 1948-1968
5	A Ready Recruit	65
6	A Covert Foot Soldier	77
7	On the Edge of Conflict	97
8	Running the Secret War	106
9	Of Coups, Floods, and Failures	119
Part III	China Opens Up, 1969-1981
10	Reading the Tea Leaves	135
11	Breaking Down Walls	152
12	Kissinger's Man in China	169
13	Good Fortune	196
14	Riding a Wave	213
Part IV	Diplomat in Action, 1982-1991
15	Righting the Balance	227
16	The Golden Years	249
17	Pushing for Change	264
18	"Through the Blur of Our Tears"	282
19	Stepping on a Volcano	297
20	Small Victories	335
	Epilogue	373
	Acknowledgments	383
	Notes	385
	Bibliography	402
	Index	406

Editorial Reviews

… there is more to China Hands than spying. Lilley was present at the creation of George H.W. Bush's special relationship with Deng Xiaoping in 1977. He offers new information on the internal U.S. government battle over the August 1982 communiqué with China that was supposed to limit U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and also sheds light on a secret Ronald Reagan memo for the file that immediately rendered the communiqué a dead letter. He also revisits Reagan's simultaneous "six assurances" to Taiwan that promised no pressure to negotiate with Beijing. He describes his role in preparing the way for controversial arms sales to Taiwan, particularly the Indigenous Defense Fighter and the F-16 aircraft. — Andrew J. Nathan

The Washington Post

In China Hands James Lilley, a former United States ambassador to China, recalls a life of derring-do as a diplomat there, giving a real-life boys' adventure story that will have many grown-ups staying up past their bedtimes.—Bruce Gilley

The New York Times

This important contribution to the crowded field of histories detailing Sino-U.S. relations in the 20th century is singular in its scope and perspective. James Lilley, who served in various posts all over East Asia, offers firsthand accounts of America's crude "gunboat, oil can, and Bible" diplomacy in Asia at the turn of the last century through the more nuanced approach at the end of the Cold War. Lilley's unique personal history distinguishes his version of events from similar efforts by journalists. Members of Lilley's family, since his father took work with Standard Oil's China office in 1916, have at different times been helpless witnesses, tortured participants and active U.S. patriots in Asia throughout what has arguably been the region's most tumultuous century since the Mongol invasion. Though written in a blunt, unadorned style befitting its author, a 20-year veteran of the CIA, this book exposes Lilley's ardent love for his family and his country. His devotion to the latter is apparent in his total lack of self-doubt in passages detailing illegal CIA operations in Laos and the war in Vietnam. His vivid and enlightening account of the Tiananmen Square massacre includes details that could be known only by him, as he was U.S. ambassador to China at the time. That chapter, which details the strafing of the American embassy by Chinese soldiers and the clandestine housing of dissident Fang Lizhi, is among several in which the book is aided by Lilley's high perch in government. Written with his son, a journalist, his candid account is a must-read for students of Asia and intelligence work. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Ambassador James Lilley's memoir begins with his childhood in China, where his father served with Standard Oil. Lilley left China to attend Exeter and Yale, but upon graduation, he was recruited — along with nearly 100 Yale classmates — into the newly formed CIA for what would turn out to be a career spent mostly back in Asia. After clandestine service in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Laos, Lilley became a member of the first official U.S. team posted in Beijing after President Richard Nixon's opening of relations with China. (Henry Kissinger negotiated the placement of intelligence officers in each mission so the White House would be able to bypass the State Department.) Shortly after returning to Washington to be the national intelligence officer on China, Lilley left the CIA to return to Asia as Director of the American Institute in Taiwan and, later, as ambassador to Seoul and then Beijing — the culmination of an extraordinary career. Lilley recounts the inside story of U.S. policymaking in a keen, clear-eyed manner. His insider's account of key policy decisions related to both Taipei and Beijing, as well as of personal relations among Washington elites, adds considerably to our understanding of four critical decades in East Asia — and offers a great deal of wisdom about how Washington should manage relations with the region today.

Foreign Affairs

A diplomat's memoirs recount a lifetime's experiences in China and adjacent lands. Born in 1928 in Tsingtao, the son of a Standard Oil executive, Lilley had to be repatriated so that he and his China-born siblings could be "Americanized." By his account, they lived in something of a bubble in China, safe in European compounds, tended to by amahs and houseboys; Lilley clearly feels some nostalgia for that comfortable time, and indeed for the prewar era in general. (Against all current convention, though unapologetically, he insists on rendering Beijing as "Peking," which lends his words a musty feel.) On returning to the US for college, Lilley was recruited into intelligence work and served in Asia for many years in the CIA, involved in operations in places such as Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War era. Relocated to CIA headquarters, he recalls, he soon found himself missing the field ("I couldn't help feeling as if the CIA bureaucrats in Langley didn't know what was going on in the field. And now I was one of those bureaucrats"), but he was rescued when Henry Kissinger started wheels turning "toward projecting a fresh U.S. relationship with China," in Lilley's bureaucratic phrase. Though closely identified with the CIA-and known to government officials on all sides as such-Lilley managed to make the jump to the State Department, and eventually to serve as ambassador to South Korea from 1986 to 1989 and ambassador to China from 1989 to 1991. Though on the ground for the Tiananmen Square massacre, Lilley sheds more light on doings back in Washington, which included thwarting Secretary of State Alexander Haig's ambitions to align the US with Communist China at the expense of Taiwan,even to the extent of "considering the sale of sophisticated arms" to the Communist government. Overall, though, Lilley doesn't provide much news, leaving this primarily for US-Asia completists.

Kirkus Reviews