A paralyzed China
An editorial / Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service April 09, 2001
- However the detention of the U.S. spy plane crew plays out, the
event has revealed two things about the Chinese leadership: It is
deeply divided and worrisomely insecure.
The result has been paralysis in Beijing. The civilian half of
the government cannot overrule the military half, and Chinese
President Jiang Zemin, traveling in South America, is unable to
lay down the law from overseas. The delay in releasing the crew -
due to what seems an internal dispute between hard-line
nationalists and more internationally minded reformers - could
have the same practical effect as a deliberate policy of
antagonizing the United States
The Bush administration has handled the incident carefully,
almost diffidently, with an emphasis on low-key diplomacy and an
absence of threats. To say, as Secretary of State Colin Powell
and presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer often do, that delay
risks damaging the U.S.-China relationship is to only state the
self-evident.
The first evidence that relations are souring was the
cancellation of a number of planned congressional visits to China
over the Easter recess, even though President Bush urged the
lawmakers to go.
The conventional wisdom - and it seems correct - is that the
Chinese leadership, with no elections or ideology to legitimize
it, holds power in an unspoken economic bargain with the people:
The people tolerate the government as long as the government
raises living standards.
The threat to China's leadership from its inability to resolve
this incident is economic. If China is not in the World Trade
Organization by June - and it's hard to see that happening if the
crew is still in custody - Congress must extend normal trade
relations with China. Failure to do would be a huge setback to
China's trade hopes, indefinitely postponing WTO membership.
Certainly its hopes of hosting the 2008 Olympics, due to be
decided this summer, would be over, and Bush would likely cancel
a planned visit to China this fall, a diplomatic snub that make
any "apology" look trivial. Congress would insist on lavishing
high-grade weapons on Taiwan, forcing China to spend even more
money on its own military.
Most importantly, continued intransigence would hamstring the
bipartisan bloc of U.S. lawmakers, policy makers, business
leaders, lobbyists and academics who have pushed, with growing
influence, for closer economic, political and diplomatic ties
with China. A government capable of acting would not lightly
throw away that kind of support.
China's insistence on complete apology - "sorry" and "regret"
won't cut it with Beijing - indicates a telling lack of self-
confidence, as if somehow humbling the United States might make
it truly a first-class power.
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