Mr. Huntsman Goes to Beijing

Jon Huntsman Jr. had scarcely landed in Beijing as the new U.S. ambassador before he was imperiously summoned for a tongue-lashing. Washington was getting ready to place import duties on Chinese-made tires, and the Commerce Ministry's senior brass wanted him to know they weren't happy about it. "They called me in using language in no uncertain terms," he recalls. "They asked, 'Why would you ever want to deploy an atom bomb in a trade dispute?' " But the 49-year-old ambassador kept his cool. He had sat through plenty of similar histrionics from 2001 to 2004 as deputy U.S. trade representative. "You see every different style and type of theatrics in negotiations," he says. "So you're prepared for anything."

But there were triumphs along with the trials in Huntsman's first day on the job. Later that afternoon, decked out in running shoes, khakis, and a tieless shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he welcomed a crowd of nearly 70 Chinese and foreign reporters in the garden of his new residence, greeting them in excellent Mandarin. He talked in both Chinese and English about changing Sino-U.S. relations and introduced his wife and three of their seven children. Asha, their 3-year-old adopted daughter from India, kept gleefully punching the microphone stand. To top off the event, Huntsman threw open the doors of the residence and invited the unruly gathering inside. "Take a look around and feel at home!" the beaming ambassador said. He even allowed media to interview daughter Gracie Mei, 10, who was adopted by the Huntsmans after being found abandoned in a vegetable market outside Shanghai. "I told her she was raised in America and coming back to China and is a bridge between China and the United States," Huntsman said.

 

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His guests were bowled over. The new ambassador's openness and hospitality presented a stunning contrast to the tightly wrapped style of his predecessor, Clark T. (Sandy) Randt, an old George W. Bush frat brother from Yale who had been Washington's longest-serving ambassador in Beijing. "The picture-perfect event [was] more like a campaign stop," the Beijing-based business magazine Caijing reported on its Web site. In fact that's exactly why Huntsman is in Beijing: to rally Chinese support for the Obama agenda. His skill at drumming up enthusiasm was a big reason that President Obama crossed party lines to choose Huntsman—who not only is a registered Republican but was the national co-chairman for John McCain during the 2008 race—to run one of the most crucial U.S. diplomatic posts in the world. As the phenomenally popular governor of Utah (he was re-elected in November 2008 with 78 percent of the vote), Huntsman showed he knows how to work a crowd. And 1.3 billion people is nothing if not a crowd.

Huntsman is likely to need all the political skills he can muster. With China on the verge of unseating Japan as the world's second-largest economy, Washington and Beijing have begun a massive overhaul of their relationship. During Obama's visit to China this week, his message is that Americans welcome China's rise, and hope Beijing will join in helping solve global problems (and by the way, please keep buying those U.S. Treasury bills). Meanwhile the president has instructed his man in Beijing to keep things "positive, collaborative, and comprehensive" between the two countries. The world has changed radically since America established diplomatic ties with the isolated communist regime in Beijing three decades ago. "The days of patronizing, the days of table pounding, the days of America wins every negotiation—those days are over," says Huntsman, "Today we approach the negotiating table with mutual respect and, maybe more than ever, a defined sense of our shared interests."

Handling the rise of China may be the biggest challenge facing Washington today. To solve practically any major problem—whether it's the worsening war in Afghanistan, the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, or climate change—requires enlisting Beijing's cooperation. And that task demands extraordinary powers of persuasion, to show China's leaders that their country's interests dovetail (or at least don't clash) with those of the United States. Obama is working on it, of course, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and swarms of envoys and officials, but it's Huntsman's job to be the president's on-the-ground voice in conveying the message to Chinese officials, and his eyes and ears in assessing their responses.

His decision to accept the ambassadorship says a lot about Huntsman. This spring, Obama's 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe was quoted as saying the only Republican who made him feel "a wee bit queasy" about the 2012 race was Huntsman. Soon afterward, Obama made his offer to Huntsman, who reportedly was only a few weeks away from launching his own exploratory presidential campaign committee. Huntsman didn't hesitate—although by accepting the job he effectively took himself out of the 2012 race (2016 may be a whole different story). "I now know why they built the Oval Office," he says. "It's an impossible room in which to say 'no.' "

Political pros praised Obama's move as a masterstroke. In the name of bipartisanship, the appointment eliminated a potentially dangerous opponent—and recruited a uniquely qualified diplomat. "Keep your friends close and your enemies in China," cracked Republican strategist Mark McKinnon. But Huntsman couldn't resist the offer: China had fascinated him since childhood. One day in 1971, when he was 11 and his father (plastics magnate Jon Huntsman Sr.) was serving as special assistant to President Richard Nixon, the boy accompanied Jon Sr. to the White House. Henry Kissinger was there, preparing to embark on a hush-hush mission, and Jon Jr. was allowed to carry the national-security adviser's briefcase to a waiting car. The boy asked Kissinger where he was going, and Huntsman recalls the reply: "Please don't tell anyone. I'm going to China."