James R. Lilley, 81, Envoy in Tiananmen Era, Dies
WASHINGTON — James R. Lilley, a former intelligence agent and ambassador to China who viewed that country with a rare blend of pragmatism and love because of his childhood there, died Thursday at a Washington hospital. He was 81.
James R. Lilley in 2003.
Mr. Lilley, who lived in Washington, died of complications linked to prostate cancer, said his son Jeffrey of Silver Spring, Md.
Under his old friend President George H. W. Bush, Mr. Lilley was ambassador in Beijing from 1989 to 1991, a period marked by the brutal suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square. “It has been called, and it was, a massacre,” Mr. Lilley declared in “China Hands,” his 2004 memoir, written with his son Jeffrey and published by PublicAffairs.
Mr. Lilley was familiar with the students’ grievances: only days after arriving in Beijing in 1989, he took to riding his bicycle on the streets to glean firsthand knowledge of what was going on.
But while he sympathized with the Chinese students’ yearning for more openness and “an end to cronyism and corruption,” and appreciated the need for the United States to condemn the bloodshed, he argued against any suggestion that Washington’s relationship with China should be cut off or cut back.
“I wanted to make the point that the United States had to stay engaged with China for strategic reasons,” he wrote of his frequent television appearances after the tanks rolled into the square in June 1989. “America, I insisted, could contribute in constructive ways to a more open China.”
Mr. Lilley was almost alone in diplomatic circles for the respect he enjoyed among both the Chinese Communist leaders and the Taiwanese.
Born in Shandong Province (his father, Frank, was an oil executive, and his mother, Inez, a teacher), James Roderick Lilley grew up attended by a Chinese nanny. He became almost as fluent in Mandarin as in English; he also spoke French.
As a boy, he played catch with a young Japanese soldier in the occupied China of the 1930s, before the horror of war made such a friendship unthinkable.
His family returned to the United States in 1940. He graduated from Yale University and received a master’s degree from George Washington University. He also attended Hong Kong and Columbia Universities to study classical Chinese. He served in the Army in 1945-46 and later in the Air Force Reserve.
Mr. Lilley joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951 “as a foot soldier in America’s efforts to keep Asia from being dominated by Communist China,” as he wrote in his memoir.
In 1975, he was appointed national intelligence officer for China, the senior post in the intelligence community on Chinese affairs. He was the senior East Asian specialist on the National Security Council early in the administration of President Ronald Reagan.
In the mid-1980s, he was a consultant on international security affairs for the Defense Department and deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
Mr. Lilley then served as ambassador to South Korea, through a time of political tumult that led in 1987 to the first genuine presidential election in 16 years.
Outside government, Mr. Lilley taught Chinese economics at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies and was a consultant for companies doing business in China.
Mr. Lilley was well known for dispensing frank advice. A month after Tiananmen, he told Secretary of State James A. Baker III that a decision to send American Navy ships on an official visit to Shanghai in May 1989 had been a bad miscalculation, leaving the impression among Beijing leaders that Washington was “cozying up” to their military just as the Tiananmen protests were boiling up.
Yet the Chinese continued to view him as a friend as well as a diplomat. In May 1991, as he was preparing to return to America, a series of farewell parties in his honor drew crowds.
As for his personal feelings about China, “The country had defined my family’s life since 1916, when my father stepped off a boat in Shanghai harbor to work for Standard Oil,” he reminisced in his memoir.
Surviving are his wife, Sally; two other sons, Douglas, of Washington, and Michael, of Rumson, N.J.; a sister, Elinore Washburn, of Andover, Mass.; and six grandchildren.
ジェームズ・リリー元米大使が死去
ジェームズ・リリー元駐中国大使＝２００８年４月【ワシントン＝山本秀也】米中央情報局（ＣＩＡ）出身の中国専門家で、天安門事件（１９８９年）当時に駐中国大使を務めたジェームズ・リリー氏が１２日夜、ワシントン市内の病院で死去した。８１歳。「中国のサハロフ」と呼ばれた反体制天文物理学者、方励之博士夫妻を同事件後に大使館内で保護する一方、当時のブッシュ政権下で米中関係の修復に努めた。
リリー氏は中国・青島出身。流暢（りゅうちょう）な中国語を生かして東西冷戦下のアジアで外交、情報工作に当たり、米国在台協会（ＡＩＴ）台北事務所長（大使に相当）、駐韓大使などを歴任した。同事件後の水面下交渉を含む中国への知見は、回顧録「チャイナハンズ」に収められて話題を呼んだ。
ブッシュ元大統領は１３日、「最も見識豊富ですぐれた手腕の大使だった」との追悼談話を発表。米アリゾナ州在住の方励之博士は、産経新聞に対し、「事件後には大変な世話になった。非常に聡明（そうめい）な人物だった」と語った。
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