I have great respect for the Taiwanese. They have done an extraordinary job. But it was not a sustainable position to say that the legitimate government of China resides in Taiwan, which at that time didn't have much contact with the mainland.

The first reactions are often instinctive. So one of the first things we said was that the Chinese had no right to inspect the plane, and that we had a sovereign right to. I don't know what the legal position is, but it was surely psychologically absolutely the unwise thing to do.

The challenge is whether China as a rising country, the United States as the superpower, can develop a cooperative relationship in this period before nationalism becomes so dominant in China as a substitute for communism, and a kind of self-righteous isolationism in this country that substitutes China for the Soviet Union.

It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.

The position is that stability and peace in Asia depend on a cooperative relationship between China and the United States.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.