Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 6, December 2009–January 2010, pp. 249–252
Order a copy of the issue here
<First 300 words>
The following is the partial transcript of an imaginary phone conversation between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, which has come into the hands of Adam Ward.
Hu: I hope that the weeks since the incidents of June have not placed too heavy a strain on you. My colleagues on the Politburo and I know from our own not-too-distant history that June can be a trying and dangerous month. We place importance on the Islamic Republic’s well-being, and are glad that a semblance of order has been restored to your country. We congratulate you on having achieved this without quite the level of coercive exertion that, alas, proved all too necessary in our own case in 1989. Surveying the scene after that challenge to Communist Party rule – a crisis that revealed alarming fissures and diffusion in our power structures, and what we call ‘contradictions’ in our wider society – the Politburo under our Paramount Leader, Deng Xiaoping, took stock. We asked ourselves this question: how is a political survival strategy for the Party to be amalgamated with a new, more expansive set of mutually reinforcing geopolitical and economic objectives for our country? I wonder, Mr Supreme Leader, if, in all the tumult of recent months, you have had the opportunity to ask yourself a similar question? My colleagues and I see some parallels with your predicaments and those we have laboured under. May I point them out?
Khamenei: Do go on.
Hu: You have a long and continuous civilisation. So do we. Your people are ethnically distinct from those of your immediate neighbours. So are ours. You derive some internal coherence and cohesion from this, but it makes your neighbours suspicious; and you certainly have no love for them. We feel the same way. Your...
Get full article here
Adam Ward is Director of Studies at the IISS.
Related Articles
China's Democratised Foreign Policy by Denny Roy (February–March 2009)
Iran: Diplomacy and Deterrence by Andrew Parasiliti (October–November 2009)
The Roots of Iran's Election Crisis by Amin Saikal (October–November 2009)
Iran's Power in Context by Shahram Chubin (February–March 2008)
China and America: Trouble Ahead? by Adam Ward (Autumn 2003)
