US‐China Relations Report, Vol. 7
The Three Noes and Four Noes

Yoshifumi Nakai (Professor, Gakushuin University)

Many readers will remember the “three noes.” In June 1998, speaking at Shanghai
Library midway through his nine‐day tour of China, US President Bill Clinton—thenmired in a sex scandal with an intern—remarked on the “three noes” in reference to theTaiwan issue, the main concern in US‐China relations at the time. Why did President
Clinton bring up the Taiwan issue at this juncture? The answer lies in the Taiwan Strait
crisis between the two countries in March 1996, two years prior to the visit. Addressing
Chinese participants in a roundtable discussion, President Clinton remarked that theUnited States did not support Taiwanese independence, acknowledge the governmentof Taiwan, or support its admission to international organizations. George W. Bush,
who won the US presidency in 2001 after a neck‐and‐neck race with Democratic
candidate Al Gore, initially opted to ignore the three noes. When the September 11
terrorist attacks took place later that year, though, he launched a global battle against
terrorism and adhered to the three noes to gain China’s cooperation.

The three noes can be counted among the successes in US‐China relations. No militarytensions have arisen across the Taiwan Strait since 1996. This is a remarkableachievement in light of the fact that Taiwan was under a Democratic Progressive Party
administration for eight years from 2000. What stood in the way of then TaiwanesePresident Chen Shui‐bian, who believed in indepedence for Taiwan, were the three noes.
After some trial and error, President Chen laid aside his aspirations for independence
and sought to expand trade with continental China. Following the birth of aKuomintang administration in 2008, newly appointed President Ma Ying‐jeou
immediately set out to establish exchanges with the continent—the so‐called ThreeLinks, comprising trade, transportation, and postal linkages. Since then, personnel andeconomic exchanges between China and Taiwan have been rapidly growing. The roadto China‐Taiwan unification is long and arduous, but the days of Taiwan being thebiggest issue in US‐China relations are receding into the past.

1Now, 17 years since the three noes, the “four noes” have emerged—albeit with little
recognition thus far.

When a Chinese premier visits the United States, a relatively open opinion spaceemerges, if only briefly, in the official Chinese media. During President Xi Jinping’s
recent US visit as well, analyses by experts on US‐China relations, such as Professor
Wang Jisi, director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking
University, and Professor Zhu Feng of Nanjing University, were published. BothProfessor Wang’s column on how China and the United States should promoteco‐evolution under the “two orders” (the Chinese internal order maintained by theCommunist Party of China and the international order led by the United States) andProfessor Zhu’s piece, “China‐US Relations Must Not Be Held Hostage by the Alliance
System,” offer important, thought‐provoking commentaries.

The four noes appeared in a column printed in the Chinese daily Global Times on
September 18, just before President Xi departed for the United States. The article wastitled “The United States Must Understand Four Principles” (published in English as“Misguided US Policies Can’t Shake China”). Compared to the above pieces by the twoprofessors, the title of this column is conspicuously high‐handed and one‐sided. If asenior government official had written it, I would not have made note of it here.

My eyes, however, were inevitably fixed on the author’s name. The article was written
by Professor Wu Xinbo, executive dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan
University, the very person to whom President Clinton made his “three noes” remark inJune 1998. Seventeen years ago Professor Wu, then a young scholar, had been at thereceiving end of the US president’s unofficial remark. Now, many years later, his turn
had come to give his two cents to the United States.

The four principles according to Professor Wu are as follows. First of all, “China’spolitical stability cannot be challenged.” In Professor Wu’s view, the United States isputting pressure on the Chinese government in terms of both its political system and its
values at a level not seen since 1989. The second principle is that “it is unwise for the US2

to overreact to China’s rising influence in the Asia‐Pacific region,” as China’s growing
clout is inseparable from the revival of the Chinese people and is in the interests of otherAsia‐Pacific countries. The third principle is that “alliance should not be followed as aprinciple in coping with regional affairs.” Needless to say, the United States should not
be partial to Japan or the Philippines in territorial disputes. “Lastly,” Professor Wu
writes, “it is wrong for the US to impede China from playing an increasingly importantrole in international affairs.” US suspicions that China is challenging the international
order and attempting to change current international rules are unfounded, Wu claims.

While the three noes and four noes may use similar language, they are quite different intheir substance. The three noes were an expression of US self‐restraint. The UnitedStates presented a “nice” face to China, though from the standpoint of the powerful, bydeclaring that it would not do the things that China most despised. This gave rise to a
virtuous cycle in US‐China relations. The basic stance of the four noes, meanwhile, is
one of superiority; it is an assertion of power on China’s part. Stress is laid on China’sequality with the United States. This stance is an extension of the “China that can sayno,” a concept that emerged in the mid‐1990s. However, an attitude such as this has nochance of eliciting a “nice” response from the party to whom it is directed.

Can the “four noes” editorial be ignored, then? I believe that the article is valuable intwo respects. Firstly, it offers an insight into what the minimum objective—the bottomline—of President Xi’s September 2015 visit to the United States was. This is expressedin the first principle raised by Professor Wu. The main point that the Xi administration
wishes to convey to the United States is China’s internal stability. To get this message
across, it has wound down its anti‐corruption campaign and held a military parade on
September 3. China sent invitations to 49 countries, of which 47 (excluding Japan andthe Philippines) took part in the parade in one form or another. A threat to Chinesepolitical stability would be US interference in human rights and freedom of speech,
religion, and information (particularly with regard to materials pertaining to corruption
by top Communist Party officials).

Secondly, the four noes epitomize the Xi administration’s style of foreign policy: namely,as the Taiwanese liberal magazine The Journalist has noted, to start by displaying a3

hard‐line stance to seize the initiative and forcefully set the agenda, boost domestic
support by inciting nationalism, but make practical compromises in actual negotiations
while touting full victory at home. Viewed from such a perspective, President Xi’s US
trip was a success in that he was able to complete his week‐long visit without any
notable conflicts or accidents on the domestic front, thus demonstrating to the worldthat China can maintain internal stability even in the absence of its leader.

4