Why veteran US diplomat Paul Haenle moved to China to help broker Sino-US ties

PAUL HAENLE, 50, a veteran US diplomat and former White House official on China affairs, relocated to Beijing six years ago to serve as an active broker of China-US ties as the founding director of Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy – the China branch of the renowned foreign policy think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He tells CATHERINE WONG of the importance for China and the US to maintain communication – from high-level summits to collaborative research by Chinese and American scholars in his centre all the way to keeping in touch with his family in America by using the Chinese messaging app WeChat.

Why did you move from being director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolian Affairs on the US National Security Council to become a scholar at a leading think tank in China?

As I was leaving the White House, Douglas H. Paal from Carnegie Endowment came and told me about Carnegie’s desire to build a research centre in China by forming a collaborative partnership with Tsinghua University.

What I liked about it was, first of all, I had lived in China twice before and I was excited about moving back there. I also liked the idea of building a centre together with Chinese partners from Tsinghua under a common goal. Thirdly, I get to work on many of the issues I worked on while I was in government, but at a think tank I can impact policy debates from the outside through research and dialogue that aims to help China and the US to find constructive policy options.