Fang Lizhi
Lilley was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to be ambassador to China in 1989, the only American diplomat to head diplomatic missions in both mainland China and Taiwan. Bush and Lilley had a longstanding friendship that began in the early 1970s, when Lilley was the head of station for the CIA in Beijing, and Bush was the chief of mission. That personal relationship meant that Lilley often had the ear of the president on issues relating to China, and many of his missives home were read directly by Bush. To gain a better understanding of what was happening on the ground, Lilley began to bike regularly through the streets of Beijing soon after his arrival. Thus, he was familiar with the grievances of Chinese students who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and sympathized with their interest in a more open government and society. He criticized the Chinese government after the violent suppression of those protests, which garnered widespread international attention and condemnation. In addition, he harbored the political dissident Fang Lizhi inside the American embassy for 18 months before the Chinese government allowed Fang to enter exile in the United States.