Adjusting to China, adjusting to change: Western and Asian elites and the Williamsburg Conference, 1971-1981

Abstract

The Williamsburg Conferences, now over forty years old, were founded by John D. Rockefeller III and the Asia Society in 1971 as a means of bringing together a group of elite officials, businessmen, academics, think tank personnel, journalists and foundation executives, to consider the state of affairs in East and Southeast Asia. For three days, around forty such individuals, drawn from the United States, Japan, South Korea, non-Communist Southeast Asia, Canada, Britain, and Australia, met once a year to discuss in strict confidence the events of the past year and prospects for the future. The immediate stimulus for the first meeting was Richard Nixon’s opening to China, which left many Asian states that were allied with the United States deeply apprehensive over future developments in the region. The Williamsburg conferences, held every year at venues that shifted around Asia and the Pacific Rim (including the United States, Canada, and Australia), quickly became forums in which a fairly cohesive group of elite Americans, Asians, and a few others, its membership changing somewhat every year but with a strong core of regular attendees, regularly discussed confidentially regional issues of mutual concern to them. Winston Lord, after attending one such gathering in the mid-1970s, described these conferencs as the Asian version of the Bilderberg meetings, founded in the 1950s. John D. Rockefeller III’s brother David Rockefeller also drew on the Williamsburg conferences as a model when founding the Trilateral Commission in the 1970s. They were part of a broader movement at this period to incorporate Asians into the existing, largely Western-dominated international power structure. In the first decade, during which Robert Barnett, director of the Asia Society’s Washington Center, kept very detailed “jottings” on discussions, the shifting balance of power within Asia was a constant concern. Recurrent themes included the political and economic future of China, the future of Taiwan, the growing economic strength of Japan, and the roles of both the United States and the Soviet Union, with fears expressed that the United States might withdraw while Soviet military involvement was growing. Other major preoccupations included the development of ASEAN responses to the oil crises and international economic downturn of the 1970s and the best pathway(s) to economic and social development. In the first ten years, no representatives from Taiwan attended, nor did any individuals from North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia. After repeated invitations, in 1980 China sent three officials to attend the tenth anniversary meeting, held again at Williamsburg. Through Barnett’s “Jottings” one can trace he evolution of thinking across non-Communist East and Southeast Asia on power transitions within the region. One also gains insight into how these elite private meetings served as a means whereby elite Asians, North Americans, Australians, and Britons became more familiar with each other’s outlooks and thinking, and prominent Asians were integrated into an increasingly globalized power structure.