Qian Qichen, as the first press spokesman of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said a few words at a press conference in 1982, which aroused a fierce response in the international community.
Qian Qichen
Qian Qichen was born in January 1928 in a warm family in Tianjin, Qian Qichen was a Qing Dynasty scholar, the sixth grandson of Qian Daxin, a representative figure of the Qianjia School, although Qian Qichen's father's family lineage was not as prominent as that year, but because of Qian Qichen's father's work, the Qian family's life was still relatively superior.
Qian Qichen's father Qian Jie also received a new-style education in his early years, proficient in electrical machinery knowledge and English, was hired by the Tianjin Telegraph Bureau, became an electrical mechanical engineer, the Tianjin Telegraph Bureau is a company founded in the late Qing Dynasty, belongs to the more successful civilian enterprises operated by the Westerners, so the salary is relatively higher.
When Qian Qichen was nine years old, his father Qian Jie unfortunately died of illness, leaving only his wife Ge Shi and four children, including Qian Qichen, and the four mothers and sons had a very difficult life.
The next year, Ge Shi took the four brothers and sisters to Shanghai to make a living, Qian Qichen, as the second son in the family, in addition to sharing the housework with his brother to help his mother, the rest of the time was studying hard, his mother told him, although the life at home is not as good as before, but we must go to school.
In 1942, Qian Qichen was admitted to the Affiliated Middle School of Datong University, and the three years of study and life in the Affiliated Middle School of Datong University were of great importance to Qian Qichen.
During these three years, he recalled, "he not only established his own outlook on life and determined his own political direction, but also changed his way of life." At this time, he already had a lofty ideal of serving the country, and he continued to work hard for it.
Qian Qichen has never had the experience of staying overseas, but his English is the best among his peers in both oral and written tests, and it is because of this that he has successfully embarked on the diplomatic road in the future.
Ge Chuanjian would take Qian Qichen to read English newspapers with him, and also practice his spoken language with him, as if he were cultivating him as if he were his own son.
In the year of entering the middle school affiliated to Datong University, Qian Qichen joined the Communist Party of China, and although Qian Qichen was young, he had a big idea, and soon he became the secretary of the party branch of the school, leading party members to participate in various student movements.
After Japan's defeat in the war, the US Government actively pursued the policy of rearmament the Japanese fascists, openly captured Japan's aggressive forces in the face of the international community, and completely turned a blind eye to the evil deeds committed by the Japanese fascists against China.
After the news returned to China, the young students were indignant, and on May 4, 1948, more than 10,000 students in Shanghai gathered together to hold an "anti-AMERICAN pro-Japanese" demonstration movement, including Qian Qichen.
After several years of party affairs work and attention to the international situation, Qian Qichen's sense of political smell and diplomatic smell has become more and more sensitive, and he has always liked to read ancient history books, and he was deeply inspired by the cooperation between countries recorded in "Spring and Autumn" and "Zuo Zhuan", and the tug-of-war between envoys and envoys on national interests.
In August 1954, Qian Qichen was sent to the Central League School in the Soviet Union to study, and then stayed in the Soviet Union as the second secretary of the Chinese Embassy in the Soviet Union, for the unpredictable relationship between China and the Soviet Union, in the Soviet Union, he had a deeper understanding, this experience of working and living in the Soviet Union also provided him with a different perspective on Sino-Soviet relations and handling Sino-Soviet relations.
Working in the Soviet Union gave him a deeper understanding of The politics and people of the Soviet Union and a relatively intuitive contact, and Qian Qichen would not have imagined that in 1982, more than twenty years later, he would stand on the cusp of the times and handle Sino-Soviet relations that had gone through storms, and his speech caused tremendous repercussions at home and abroad.
In May 1982, at the age of 54, Qian Qichen became vice minister of foreign affairs, in charge of the Affairs of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It was less than a decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which shook the world situation.
Sino-Soviet relations have been frictional since the 1950s, lasting three decades: a decade of polemics, a decade of confrontation, and a decade of negotiations. During Khrushchev's tenure, the Soviet Union revoked its aid program for China, and Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated.
After Brezhnev came to power, although he put an end to Khrushchev's political tendency to de-Stalinize, his own governance of the Soviet Union inevitably fell into a rigid situation, resulting in the Loss of the Vitality of Reform and Progress in the Soviet Union, and the huge military expenditure also had a serious adverse impact on the long-term development of the Soviet economy.
However, he still made a certain contribution to the easing of Sino-Soviet relations, and in the eighteenth year of Brezhnev's inauguration, that is, in 1982, during the negotiations, some changes took place in Sino-Soviet relations.
On March 24, 1982, Brezhnev traveled to central Asia of the Soviet Union and delivered a long speech in Tashkent, the capital of the Uzbek Republic, in which he unsurprisingly still had a biased attack on China, but in this long speech, he still captured the signal of improving Sino-Soviet relations.
Brezhnev
In his speech, Brezhnev clearly stated that the Soviet Union recognized that China still belongs to the socialist camp and is a socialist country, and also made public its position on the understanding that Taiwan belongs to China.
The news soon reached China, when sino-US relations were normalized only three years ago, and the us made new progress in this year on the issue of US arms sales to Taiwan, which had not reached a consensus when China and the United States formally established diplomatic relations, and the agreement was about to be signed, and after three years of running-in, the new framework for Sino-US relations had been basically established.
In March 1982, Qian Qichen had not yet become vice minister of foreign affairs and was still in the position of director of the Information Department.
At present, the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is mainly responsible for publishing information on China's important diplomatic activities and expounding China's foreign policy work, but in the 1980s, the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not yet establish a press conference system. Qian Qichen actually had the idea of setting up a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and this incident became a perfect opportunity.
After the decision was put into action, Qian Qichen immediately held an emergency meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to arrange the press conference, and after referring to the foreign Ministry press conference system, Qian Qichen still decided that China's first press conference should be done concisely and forcefully, and it is enough to clearly indicate China's attitude.
On March 26, 1982, the day after Brezhnev's speech, China responded. Qian Qichen chose the address of the first press conference in the history of the Chinese Foreign Ministry at the entrance hall of the main building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and later the foreign ministry's press conference became the norm and was held every week, but this was the first and last time Qian Qichen presided over the press conference.
A total of seventy or eighty Chinese and foreign reporters were invited to attend the foreign ministry's press conference, each of whom was fully armed, hung a camera around his neck, and held in his hand that although he was ready to write a book, he would never leave behind every word Qian Qichen said, and he was full of expectations for this news conference.
As a mysterious China that has just established normalized relations with the United States and has implemented reform and opening up, foreign journalists have a strong interest in us.
It is worth mentioning that the translator for this press conference was Li Zhaoxing, who is also a legendary diplomat of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
From 1985 to 1990, he confronted foreign journalists as assistant minister and foreign ministry spokesman, answering the harsh questions of many foreign journalists, but his most impressive was the handling of the 1999 incident in which the US-led NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Li
Li Zhaoxing, who is extremely capable and powerful, as an interpreter, can be said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has prepared very well for this first press conference.
As soon as the time came, Qian Qichen appeared at the scene of the Foreign Ministry's press conference in high spirits, and the reporters rushed forward to surround him.
"We took note of the speech on Sino-Soviet relations delivered by Chairman Brezhnev of the USSR in Tashkent on March 24. We firmly reject the attacks on China in our speeches. In Sino-Soviet and international affairs, we attach importance to the actual actions of the Soviet Union. ”
After the statement was issued, the Soviet reporters present were liberated from the tense state, and from their joyful expressions, Qian Qichen knew that these friends from the Soviet Union must have experienced the deep meaning of the statement.
What Qian Qichen meant by "attaching importance to the actual actions of the Soviet Union" meant that if the Soviet Union really had the will to repair relations with China, then China was waiting for them to take practical action. This can already be regarded as a precursor to breaking the ice for Sino-Soviet relations, which have been deadlocked for a long time and are critically attacking each other.
On the second day of the press conference, the eyes of the world were focused on China, and the authoritative domestic newspaper "People's Daily" and foreign Countries' Associated Press, Reuters, TASS, Agence France-Presse, and United Press International, the world's five major news agencies, all made detailed reports on this important event, and asserted that after this brief exchange, Sino-Soviet relations may change.
One day, Deng Xiaoping invited several leaders of the Central Committee and key leaders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to his home for a meeting to study the issue of Soviet relations, and Qian Qichen was also present.
Deng Xiaoping pointed out that the improvement of Sino-Soviet relations is in line with the trend of history, and we do not need to go backwards, but we must also handle it in a principled manner, and we cannot pounce on it as soon as they send out a signal of relaxation. The improvement of Sino-Soviet relations must be based on the Soviet Union's initiative to resolve the "three major obstacles" of the withdrawal of troops from the Sino-Soviet border area and the Mongolian People's Republic; withdrawal from Afghanistan; and persuasion of Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia.
Guided by this policy, political consultations between China and the Soviet Union gradually entered the preparatory stage of formal preparations. In August 1982, the director general of the Soviet Union Department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs went to Moscow in a low-key manner to meet with the vice foreign minister of the Soviet Union to exchange views on the "three major obstacles".
On August 20, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the SOVIET Union Maltsev met with Ma Susheng, chargé d'affaires a.i. of the Chinese Embassy in the SOVIET Union, and gave a formal reply on the matter, and Sino-Soviet political consultations can already be put on the agenda.
The first round of political consultations between China and the Soviet Union was held in Beijing in October 1982, and although Qian Qichen had made ideological preparations for a long-term contest at the beginning, he never imagined that after more than a dozen rounds of political consultations, China and the Soviet Union would end decades of stalemate relations.
Qian Qichen's foreign ministry spokesman system, which Qian Qichen pioneered in China, continues to this day, and his contribution to China's foreign exchanges can be said to be indispensable, and a senior diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs once commented on Qian Qichen:
The reason why Minister Qian was able to calmly and calmly face reporters' questions was because he had a deep foundation of high policy level, was diligent in studying, and was good at learning and accumulating extensive knowledge through investigation and research.
The reason why Qian Qichen was able to serve as the deputy foreign minister in charge of Soviet and Eastern European affairs had a lot to do with his study and life in the Soviet Union in his early years, and every step he took in his youth laid a solid foundation for him to become Qian Qichen in the future.
Qian Qichen is always soft and rigid in his diplomatic work, and he is different from Li Zhaoxing in that he is not a diplomat with a sharp tongue and a relatively tough attitude to the outside world; even if he encounters very annoying things in negotiations, Qian Qichen will not argue loudly with people, he is always gentle and elegant, and his tone is very peaceful.
The need to respond accurately, in a timely manner and to convey our message forcefully is an important reason why he chose to conclude with a simple three-sentence statement at the foreign ministry press conference in 1982.
Nowadays, the Foreign Ministry's regular press conference every Monday to Friday at three o'clock in the afternoon has almost become a press conference of national concern as the people's interest in political issues and international issues has increased.
Through the press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we can accurately understand our country's attitude towards international events and domestic events to the world, and it can be said that the current press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not only a bridge for communication between China and the world, but also an opportunity for dialogue between the country and the people to some extent.
Hua Chunying, Wang Yi, Zhao Lijian, and other foreign ministry spokesmen who are very popular among the people represent China's attitude, and every word and sentence needs to be considered.
Just as their elder Qian Qichen opened the prelude to the first press conference in the history of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in three short sentences, they also truly achieved "cautious words and cautious deeds." In the face of the tricky questions and answers of foreign reporters, under the short and powerful counterattack, it also did not lose China's great power style.