As a young foreign service officer and diplomat in the U.S. State Department in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jeffrey Bader, who has a doctorate in European history, found himself at the epicenter of a major event in modern American history: the opening of relations with the People’s Republic of China.
Working in Washington in 1978 for Richard Holbrooke, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Bader quickly realized something important was happening. He witnessed firsthand the government’s aggressive efforts to deal with China, which had begun to emerge from its Communist-imposed shell after President Richard Nixon’s historic visit in 1972 and Chairman Mao’s death in 1976.
“I thought China was going to be the big story and the big relationship for the U.S. for the next 100 years,” Bader recalls.
On the brink. His first job in the East Asia Bureau marked the beginning of a distinguished 27-year career spent stationed in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C., where he managed U.S.-China relations in various government positions and served as the National Security Council's Asia specialist under the Clinton administration.
Although history has proved Bader prescient in his anticipation of China’s rise in global importance, he admits that most experts at the time felt the primary concerns would be security and politics. “I don’t think many of us understood in ’78 and ’79 how much China’s economy was going to explode,” he says. “It took about 15 years before it really started in a serious way.”
The optimist. Commenting on his initial excitement about Chinese affairs, Bader says “I thought, in my naïve, youthful way, that getting this relationship right was going to mean more for the United States than anything else I could think of, so that we could avoid another war and advance our global strategic interests.”
Implementing his expertise. Three years after retiring from the Foreign Service in 2002, Bader joined the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. to direct the John L. Thornton China Center. There, Bader and his staff research and write about issues involving China, including its economy, China-Taiwan relations, security, environment and energy. They also brief Congress members and U.S. government officials on these subjects and make recommendations on related public policy issues.
In addition to his work at the Brookings Institution, Bader is a member of the academic advisory board for the U.S.-China Congressional Working Group, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the editorial board ofChina Security Magazine and the policy advisory board for the Asia Society.
Looking to the future. What will happen to China, which already possesses a world-transforming economy, as it continues to grow and develop?
“Chinese leaders don’t know what China will be like in 20 or 30 years from now, so there’s no way we can know,” Bader says. “All we can do is try to create an environment that helps encourage China to make the right decisions and not become frustrated and seek to overthrow the international system and challenge the U.S.”