It would be a tricky position for any diplomat. But Cui, a 67-year-old veteran of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, has added burdens. He is by nature a cautious man, and Americans who know him say he’s a skilled and reliable interlocutor. But he serves an opaque communist system that keeps diplomats on a tight leash and where speaking truth to power is simply not done, especially not under leader Xi Jinping. Cui’s host country, meanwhile, is led by an often-unpredictable president determined to maintain U.S. supremacy over China, making it harder for Cui’s words and actions to have any impact.
Regardless, Cui has been trying to shape the debate. In recent weeks, the U.S.-educated ambassador has used forums from Twitter to the Sunday morning shows to present China’s version of events. A fluent English-speaker, Cui has defended China’s response to the outbreak, warned commentators not to “create panic” and praised a now-dead doctor whom Chinese authorities tried to silence as he raised alarms about the virus.
Coronavirus is “an unprecedented challenge,” Cui tweeted Feb. 14. “So we are taking unprecedented responses to contain and control the virus, provide treatment to the people and reduce its impact on economic and social activities.”
Cui carries more weight than the average Chinese diplomat, not least because of his lengthy tenure in Washington. But the diplomatic challenge posed by the coronavirus comes amid a backdrop of other factors that have made Cui’s job even more delicate than years past.
Above all, there’s the growing hostility toward China among Democrats and Republicans alike.
U.S. officials, lawmakers and outside voices increasingly see the Chinese Communist Party as a negative global force bent on spreading its influence on every front, including militarily, without democratizing and through oppression of its citizens. The Trump administration has whacked China on issues ranging from its control of telecom firms to its debt-powered diplomacy in Africa to its theft of intellectual property to its imprisonment of more than a million Uighur Muslims.
Then there’s the unraveling trade ties, driven in part by Trump’s willingness to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. The trade war, recently ameliorated by a first-step trade deal, has support from some Democrats who feel China has been cheating the U.S. on the economic front.
Cui faces the added challenge of increasingly tense diplomatic maneuvering by both countries as they test how much the other will tolerate.
Last fall, the U.S. announced it will require Chinese diplomats to notify the State Department before they meet with local or state officials or with educational and research institutions.
The State Department cast the restrictions as an act of “reciprocity,” noting that U.S. diplomats in China face far more severe curbs. For instance, U.S. diplomats often have to obtain permission from Chinese authorities to meet someone, not simply offer a notification.
China retaliated later in 2019, requiring what are presumably extra notifications for meetings by U.S. diplomats on top of restrictions they already face.
Just days ago, the U.S. designated five Chinese media outlets as “foreign missions,” effectively declaring them extensions of China’s government. The designations mean those outlets — Xinhua, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily and People’s Daily – must obtain the U.S. federal government’s permission for various actions, such as leasing office space.
“They are, in fact, part and parcel of the [People’s Republic of China] propaganda apparatus,” a senior State Department official said of the outlets.
Shortly afterward, China expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters. China linked the expulsions to its anger over a headline in the Journal’s opinion pages that referred to China as the “sick man” of Asia. It wasn’t clear if there were other reasons, or if the U.S. designations of the Chinese media outlets had affected the decision; however, one of the three journalists had co-authored a story about corruption allegations against a relative of Chinese leader Xi.
The Trump administration is weighing how and whether to respond.
The “tit for tat” moves by the U.S. and China – some of it related directly to the virus, some of it not – have made both sides increasingly distrustful of each other when ideally they’d cooperate to stop the spread of the illness, said Laurie Garrett, an award-winning science journalist.
As a result, “the narrative in China becomes we’re suffering because of those evil Americans,” Garrett said.
China’s diplomats and some of its Foreign Ministry officials have in recent months become much more aggressive on social media, often with an anti-American tone. In concurrence, the Chinese embassy in Washington has beefed up its online presence, including creating a Twitter account for Cui, who nonetheless is more cautious than some of his colleagues.
(The diplomats’ use of Twitter is something of a sore point with human rights activists who note that Chinese citizens are for the most part barred from accessing the social media network.)
Like several other foreign envoys in Washington, Cui realized early on that getting close to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was key to gaining some currency with the Republican administration. The pair established a backchannel, and Kushner helped arrange a meeting between Xi and Trump at the U.S. president’s Mar-a-Lago club in April 2017.
Despite reports that Cui and Kushner still talk, people who know the gray-haired ambassador say he appears frustrated at an overall lack of access to U.S. officials, including at the State Department. It’s a frustration likely to rise if the U.S. keeps imposing more restrictions on Chinese diplomats in Washington.
Cui also seems tired of his current position. “He just keeps getting extended. They won’t let him go home,” a Washington think tanker who knows him said.
Within U.S. official circles, including in Congress, there’s also a sense that Chinese diplomats are not empowered the way American diplomats may be – even one with as key a position as Cui.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry is viewed as having diminished influence under Xi. Foreign policy decisions, especially those regarding the U.S., are more likely to be made by a tight circle of Communist leaders around Xi.
Among U.S. officials, there are serious questions about how honest Cui can be to his superiors back in Beijing, especially given what appears to be a much more repressive environment in China under Xi.
Other observers say Cui has, at the very least, more sway in Beijing than most of his colleagues.
“I think he has great access in China,” said Stephen Orlins, president of the non-profit, pro-engagement National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, stressing that Beijing clearly thinks enough of Cui’s abilities to leave him in Washington.
Still others say the reality of the Chinese system is that even diplomats with a perch like Cui’s have difficulty speaking truth to power. “Can he call up Xi Jinping and say, ‘Well, you’re really blowing it,’? No,” the Washington think tanker said.
One former senior Obama administration official argued that Trump’s actions on the world stage make Cui’s job easier.
Because the U.S. president has often made unpredictable moves, downplayed U.S. alliances and pursued policies – such as separating migrant children from their parents – that arguably violate human rights, China can deflect concerns about its actions by pointing to America.
“The coming together of China’s more assertive public defense of their own system coincides with a moment where the U.S. and by extension the West seems like it’s having some trouble,” the former official said. “But that doesn’t mean China’s actually solved its problems.”
Another aspect of the U.S.-China relationship that makes it hard to navigate for diplomats on both sides is that Trump has staked a great deal on his personal relationship with Xi.
The two stay in touch, and Trump often peddles a softer line on topics such as human rights than some of his aides, presumably to stay in Xi’s good graces. Trump has, for instance, been reluctant to condemn Beijing for its response to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The Chinese system values experience and knowledge when doling out prized foreign posts – a contrast to the U.S. system in which ambassadorships are often handed out to political donors with little diplomatic experience.
Cui, for instance, previously was a vice minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While there, he was involved in defusing another major U.S.-Chinese dispute: what to do with Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 2012.
Cui also served as China’s ambassador to Japan, another sensitive post. He earned a graduate degree at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in the 1980s, giving him a taste of the U.S. early on. But he remains curious about America and its traditions. In 2014, Cui and his wife attended the Super Bowl, watching the Seattle Seahawks destroy the Denver Broncos.
Cui has long been willing to speak at D.C. think tanks and to organizations such as the U.S.-China Business Council. But he rarely strays from standard Chinese diplomatic talking points urging amity and cooperation.
In a speech to the business council in December, Cui took aim at a theory that suggests the U.S. and China are headed for war because of the dynamics of great power rivalry.
“There is no ‘Thucydides trap’ in the world, and the real trap will only come from misunderstanding, misjudgment and obstinate prejudice,” Cui said.
The Chinese embassy did not make Cui available for an interview for this story. But he’s appeared on various radio and television networks in recent weeks to discuss China’s handling of the coronavirus.
In an interview with PBS, Cui faced repeated questions on whether China was being honest with the world about the numbers involved in the virus’ spread.
“Our goal is to encourage people to tell the truth and to confront the challenge. And people will only be punished if they fail to do that,” he said.
Questions about what happened to Dr. Li Wenliang have stretched Cui’s messaging ability to the limit. Chinese officials tried to silence Li as he raised concerns about the virus. Li eventually died of the illness, and his treatment has deeply upset many Chinese citizens.
Cui has vacillated from insisting that Li was never technically “detained” to praising him as a “devoted” practitioner whose loss was “tragic.” He’s implied that Li was acting irresponsibly in raising alarms.
“You see, we believe in openness, but openness does not mean that you could say anything under any circumstances. The government has to respond in a responsible way,” Cui told NPR.
In one of his more pointed messaging efforts, Cui has pushed back on suggestions by Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, that the Chinese may have created the coronavirus in a special lab, possibly as a bioweapon.
In an interview with CBS, Cui blasted Cotton’s comments.
“It’s very harmful, it’s very dangerous to stir up suspicion, rumors and spread them among the people,” Cui said. “For one thing, this will create panic. Another thing is that it will fan up racial discrimination, xenophobia, all these things that will really harm our joint efforts to combat the virus.”
Cotton has defended himself by alleging that China lied about the origins of the virus and that the Chinese government in general cannot be trusted.
Asked for comment on Cui, a spokeswoman for Cotton said the senator “doesn’t know the ambassador and has little interest in meeting with someone who’s simply a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party.”
Cui’s most recent public messages have had a soft touch. He’s been tweeting out videos and artwork from American schoolchildren sending greetings to China.
“At the critical moment of fighting #COVID19, I was deeply moved to hear wonderful singing of ‘I love you, China!’ from students of Alice Deal Middle School again. Thank you & I love you all!” he wrote Wednesday.
