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Huntsman Can Play Key Role In ChinaPublished: 17 May 2009 17:41:19 PST

Author: Gady Epstein

BEIJING–Does it matter more to Chinese leadership that an ambassador speaks fluent Chinese, or is it more important that he has a close relationship with President Obama? This was one of the first questions that came up Saturday after Gov. Jon Huntsman, R-Utah, a fluent Mandarin speaker, was nominated for U.S. ambassador to China.

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The simple answer is “none of the above.” By anyone’s best guess, what matters most to the Chinese leadership is the substance of the actual relationship between the White House and Zhongnanhai. The Beijing post is so strategically important, its authority is routinely usurped by Washington.

That may be why it took so long to fill the job with an ambitious figure of substance, as President Obama seems to have done here.

Anyone who takes it risks becoming a glorified messenger. By that measure alone, former President George W. Bush’s old Yale buddy, Clark T. Randt Jr., was a success in the post. His tenure, the longest of any American ambassador in the People’s Republic, was remarkable for being so unremarkable. He was an agreeable conduit.

By all indications so far, Obama is using much different criteria for filling his important posts. In Huntsman, he has found someone who can both build relationships with top leaders in Beijing and contribute to Washington’s understanding of what those leaders want. In other words, Obama may care more about what Huntsman can tell him about China than about the fact that the ambassador can say more than ni hao at a banquet.

Randt did not have the long resume of public service that Huntsman has. He was billed as a fluent Chinese speaker, but was never heard to prove it. He played tennis with Chinese officials, and he played along with the drinking rituals at dinners (something Huntsman, a Mormon, will have to pass on). He was valuable to the White House not for a supple understanding of the country, but for not making trouble. When was the last time you remember Randt making a news headline?

Huntsman has been an ambassador in Asia before, in Singapore in the early 1990’s, and served under Bush as America’s deputy trade ambassador. He will bring a sophisticated understanding of Washington’s needs in Asia, both politically and economically. He will have the heft to advise on policy toward China, and that would be a bad thing only if he becomes frustrated with the decisions above him.

There are so many powerful and vested interests in Washington battling over China policy that it will be a challenge for Huntsman to navigate them from Beijing, especially as a member of the opposite party who is seen as a potential White House contender.

As a practical matter, then, Huntsman still will be a glorified messenger, serving at the will of the president. Chinese leaders will appreciate that Huntsman speaks Chinese, and that he has an adopted Chinese daughter, just as China has taken a shine to the Mandarin-fluent Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

But in the final analysis, it will be the message–not the messenger who conveys it or the language in which it is spoken–that matters more. If Washington’s policy toward China is considered a success, Huntsman likely will be too–whether or not he has a hand in shaping it.

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