Bush administration
mum on Chao’s role

April 13, 2001

WASHINGTON — President Bush reportedly never picked up the phone and called Chinese President Jiang Zemin to free Navy airmen held in China. But maybe he didn’t
have to.

A member of his Cabinet is on a first-name basis with Jiang.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao’s father went to college with Jiang in Shanghai, and his shipping company does business with China. Chao herself has met privately with Jiang in Washington and in Beijing.

Elaine Chao

Did Bush, who is not chummy with China’s leadership, use Chao to develop backchannel communications with Jiang?

His spokespeople won’t say.

But they don’t deny that she may have participated in high-level talks with the White House and State Department to negotiate an end to the standoff over the downed U.S. reconnaissance plane.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss any diplomatic conversations, or get into the participants in the meetings,” said White House spokesman Jimmy Orr.

Most of the face-to-face negotiations took place in Beijing.

But some officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deputy, met with the Chinese ambassador here.

Did Chao join in those talks?

“There were a lot of people involved in the talks, so I couldn’t answer that,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria DeLong.

Chao’s spokesman Stuart Roy dodged the question altogether.

Asked if the secretary was involved in any of the negotiations, Roy snapped — “Why? Because she’s Chinese? I gotta go. I gotta go” — before abruptly hanging up the phone.

A spokeswoman for James Chao, chairman of Foremost Maritime Corp. in New York, said he was “out of town” and couldn’t comment. She says Chao hasn’t been to Washington since attending his daughter’s confirmation hearing.

The spokeswoman, however, proffered her own opinion of how the crisis will affect U.S.-Sino relations: “I think eventually it will be good, because after this happened there will be more understanding about the policy” for U.S. surveillance flights off China’s
coast.

If Chao did help break the logjam, so far no one at her old shop, the Heritage Foundation, is gloating.