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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (135559)	4/4/2001 10:47:56 PM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The WSJ ran a story today offering an explanation on why they are being held hostage. I have nothing else to offer on Milosevic or how the crew are being treated. Just thought it was some interesting observations. edit: Wrong article, I will see if I can dig it up, an article I read recently suggesting the plane was forced down because of Chinese behavior, and thus the hostage crisis which must be resolved quickly. Even if they are being treated like royalty. The WSJ: Brinksmanship in the Sky . . . The status of the downed U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane and its crew on the Chinese island of Hainan remains unknown, and the onus is clearly on the Chinese to clarify their intentions. To gauge what those intentions might be, it's worth a look back. Sending China a clear message In October 1994, a battle group led by the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk was operating in international waters near China when it detected a Chinese submarine nearby. U.S. Navy planes began tracking the sub, panicking its captain, and Chinese fighters were scrambled from the mainland to come to its aid. The incident brought threats from Beijing against American forces that next time the response would be more severe. Both episodes seem to reflect a belief on China's part that it can project its force beyond the internationally agreed territorial limits of sea and airspace, and that the U.S. is little better than an interloper in the region. Beijing attacks the notion of a pax Americana in Asia, even calling bilateral security alliances threats to stability, though some officials privately suggest the usefulness of forward deployed U.S. forces in preventing Japan from rearming. The U.S. has tried to engage China in confidence-building measures, with very limited success. China's feelings of hostility and resentment were evident in its response to the downed plane. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has tried to pin the blame on the U.S. plane, even though it was on a routine flight in international airspace. The slow propeller plane was shadowed by agile jet fighters, which recently have been approaching ever closer to such flights . The Chinese side says that the U.S. plane made a sudden turn, but no interceptor should get so close that a turn could cause a collision. Maybe it was an accident. But it's also possible that an unusually aggressive interception was planned, with the collision an unintended consequence. The U.S. is moving toward a decision to sell high-tech weapons to the island democracy of Taiwan. Perhaps a signal was being sent to the Pentagon, which is believed to have supported more such sales. In the event, the two governments have a responsibility to ratchet down the tension. But the political climate today is considerably worse than when the Kitty Hawk clashed with the sub. In the years since, China has launched missiles off Taiwan's major ports, provoking a muscular U.S. response. In an unrelated incident, U.S. bombs hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And the Internet is now a political force to be reckoned with in China. Indeed, the mainland's chat rooms are buzzing with demands that China hold the 24 crewman on the U.S. plane and its top-secret eavesdropping equipment hostage until compensation is negotiated. By proclaiming the U.S. solely responsible for the loss of a Chinese pilot, Beijing has restricted its room for maneuver. A protest was held outside the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong on Monday, and security has been stepped up outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in expectation of protests there. Yesterday President Bush criticized China's apparent determination to keep U.S. diplomats away from the plane: "Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations." He is right. Regardless of the right and wrong of the incident, the norms of international conduct in peacetime call for disabled aircraft to be allowed to make emergency landings without giving up their rights. As U.S. diplomats are already in Hainan, it should soon become clear whether China intends to hold the airmen, and perhaps accuse them of spying, as North Korea did with the USS Pueblo crew in 1968. It's worth reminding Beijing now that any such move would bring severe consequences. The rise of Chinese nationalism is a worrying phenomenon. Some proportion of the general population, the PLA and even the top leaders are convinced the U.S. is bent on exercising hegemony in Asia to prevent China from reaching great-power status. Some also believe the U.S. is a declining power, while China is now in a position to reassert its dominance in Asia. Thankfully this remains a minority position, as most Chinese leaders recognize the need to engage their neighbors and America on the basis of equality. For example, great efforts are being made, including English lessons for 600,000 people, to attract the 2008 Olympics to Beijing. But China's more enlightened leaders now need to move quickly to prevent a small incident from escalating into a dispute that fans the flames of nationalism.