Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner issued the following statement on the death of James R. Lilley:
“Jim Lilley was a giant in the China policy world. Both the experts who worked with him, and the amateurs, like me, who learned so much from him over the decades, have stood in awe of the mastery of the language, customs, influence, and subtle nuances of Asia policy by Jim. Everyone, of every political stripe, respected and admired Jim as America ’s premier ‘China hand,’ knowledgeable and principled, always keeping America’s interests at the core of his views.
As a child growing up in China and Korea, later in various government posts and as the head of America’s Liaison Office in Taipei, as our Ambassador in both Seoul and later in Beijing, Asia was in Jim’s blood. And Jim stood firm and tall, and taught us all.
As I have told my colleague, Arthur Brooks, the President of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the ways in which I really envy him is that he had Jim Lilley on his staff. And I know of no institution interested in Asia policy, left or right, that didn’t harbor the same jealousy.
The China debate - so often rancorous and generator of more heat than light - will sorely miss him.
Ambassador Lilley will no longer lead Washington policy debates on this vital bilateral relationship and on so many other Asian policy questions. But thankfully, he has left us generations of ‘China hands’ and ‘Asia hands’ who aspire to nothing more than to be the next Jim Lilley.
Linda and I extend our sincere condolences to Sally and the family.”
Newly-anointed American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks spoke at Heritage’s weekly Blogger Briefing today (listen here). He addressed the fact that conservatives must establish new language and new messages to remind Americans of the moral necessity of a culture of free enterprise. “Overwhelming majorities of Americans prefer the free market system,” he said, in an animated 50-minute discussion. “Entrepreneurship and local communities are the single best ways to lift people out of poverty…We have the goods to do what [liberals] say they want to do. We have the data and our cause is just,” he said.
The 45-year-old former Syracuse professor moved to D.C. in January and is an eloquent critic of what he calls the liberal desire to make America into a “social democracy.” In an April 30th Wall Street Journal op-ed, he wrote:
Click here to view the embedded video.Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It’s also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don’t have without regard for our children’s future.”