Yes a lot of progress. An apology would set things back a bit, I think.
A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL
China held hostage
Y CONTINUING to demand that the United States admit guilt for the midair collision of an American surveillance plane with a Chinese jet fighter, the rulers of China are reminding the world of their communist habits while holding their own nation hostage.
During Mao Zedong's rule, all Chinese accused of acting or thinking in a suspect manner were subjected to what the regime called criticism-self-criticism sessions. Stripped of Maoist jargon, these were vicious browbeating episodes in which the authorities, using and threatening violence, compelled the accused to confess abjectly to whatever charges the Communist Party had conjured up.
By applying this model of Maoist thought-control to the present case and demanding that America apologize for the collision before a genuine, fact-based investigation can take place, Mao's heirs are pursuing two primary goals. They want to place Washington in the role of supplicant so that Beijing will have the upper hand in its disputes with the United States over advanced weapons for Taiwan, continued surveillance in international airspace, and any American quest for a missile defense system.
Secondly, hardline army leaders need to save face after an accident that probably reflects their own bumbling. Hence they have engineered an effective campaign to demand self-criticism from the United States - a ploy meant to exonerate them for endangering their own pilot as well as US-China relations.
There is a crucial background to this ploy: the army's firing of missiles into waters off Taiwan in 1995 and 1996. That attempt to intimidate the people on Taiwan compelled Bill Clinton to send two carrier task forces toward the Taiwan Strait. This meant not only a loss of face for leaders of the mainland's military, but also an apparent diminution of clout for army and party hardliners in subsequent policy squabbles. The hardliners are whipping up popular indignation against the United States now so that they will not be blamed either for the collision itself or for an ensuing transfer of advanced American weapons to Taiwan.
But with their demand for a US apology that would exonerate themselves, the hardliners are making it more and more likely that China will lose all chance to be chosen as the site for the summer Olympics in 2008 - a decision to be taken this July. They also risk affecting China's $84 billion trade surplus with the United States. And they also are driving the new administration to give Taiwan most of the advanced weapons it has requested. In this way, the hardliners have taken their own country hostage.
Once the 24 American crew members have returned home, President Bush would be wise to find ways to address the Chinese people - over the heads of the regime - and to demonstrate that the hardliners' anti-American propaganda is false.
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