James Sasser, Senator and Clinton’s Envoy to China, Dies at 87

He became ambassador after three terms as a senator from Tennessee. In 1999, he was made a virtual prisoner in the embassy in Beijing during a siege by protesters.

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James Sasser, as the U.S. ambassador to China, walked outside the American Embassy in Beijing for the first time since protesters had made him a virtual prisoner there for several days. They were angry over the inadvertent bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, by NATO forces. The man with him was unidentified.

James Sasser, a three-term Democratic senator from Tennessee who, with no background in diplomacy or Chinese affairs, thrived as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to China in the late 1990s until a bombing in Europe left angry mobs besieging his embassy, died on Tuesday at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 87.

Gray Sasser, his son, said the cause was apparently a heart attack.

Never a charismatic senator, from 1977 to 1995, Mr. Sasser found his niche as Mr. Clinton’s envoy to the People’s Republic of China from 1996 to 1999, when he helped turn around a long period of eroding relations between the two superpowers by facilitating summit meetings and trade agreements. But his tenure ended badly when NATO bombs intended for a Serbian dictator mistakenly hit China’s embassy in Belgrade, setting off violent protests in Beijing.

Mr. Sasser first drew Mr. Clinton’s attention as a like-minded moderate-leaning liberal who, with the end of Cold War threats from the Soviet Union, favored deep cuts in military spending to promote health, education and community development. In 1993, Senator Sasser engineered Mr. Clinton’s first budget, setting a pattern for annual surpluses and low deficits that were a Clinton signature.

After nearly 18 years in the Senate, Mr. Sasser seemed to be coasting to a fourth term in 1994 and a pinnacle of power as the Senate majority leader. But on the threshold, he lost his seat to a political novice, Bill Frist, a Nashville heart- and lung-transplant surgeon, who joined the so-called “Republican Revolution” that seized unified control of Congress for the first time since 1952.

Shortly after Mr. Sasser’s return to private life, the United States ambassador to Beijing, J. Stapleton Roy, asked to be relieved in early 1995, and the president picked Mr. Sasser to succeed him. White House officials said Mr. Clinton regarded him as a trusted ally who had a good grasp on foreign affairs, was a quick study and performed well in complex situations.

“Clinton offered me a number of positions, but I was only interested in being ambassador to China,” Mr. Sasser said in an interview for this obituary in 2021. “I thought that the relationship between China and the United States was the most important thing in the world, going forward. I wanted to be part of that, and to do something that would be challenging.”

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