Chinese American Relations
Chinese - American RelationsIn the United States today, Americans are celebrating the return of the aircrew from China. President Bush is being widely praised for his deft handling of the hostage crisis. In China
today, the government-run media are celebrating a great “victory” over the American superpower. Chinese leaders are being praised for extracting an apology from the United States for
its aggressive invasion of Chinese territory. Who is right to celebrate? Comforting as it would be to believe otherwise, the Chinese see more clearly than we do that — so far — they have
won and we have lost.
First, make no mistake: The United States has apologized. And the fact of our apology is all the more humiliating because the United States was in no way to blame for the incident. An
American surveillance plane flying in international airspace was bumped by a Chinese fighter and forced to make an emergency landing in Chinese territory.
The Chinese pilot, some say, was “reckless.” Maybe so. But the pilot was only carrying out his government’s specific orders to recklessly harass American aircraft flying over the South
China Sea, which Beijing wants to claim as Chinese territory and from which the Chinese military wants the United States excluded. For months the Chinese have been directing their
pilots to fly closer to American surveillance planes. And for months they have ignored repeated U.S. warnings about the dangers of this new, aggressive policy.
And so the collision was not, as American officials insist, a “tragic” accident for which no one was to blame. It was the direct consequence of a deliberate Chinese policy to increase the
risks to American pilots and crew — and to their own — in order to achieve a military objective.
Confronted by this direct and deliberate challenge, the United States has apologized. We have not only expressed regret and sorrow for the loss of the Chinese pilot and plane. We have
publicly declared that we are “very sorry” for violating Chinese airspace by landing our crippled plane in Chinese territory. And let us not forgot why we apologized. The letter that our
ambassador delivered to the Chinese government this week was not the product of high diplomacy. It was not the product of Sino-American “cooperation” — a welcome harbinger of
future “crisis management” between the two powers. It was the product of Chinese extortion. They held our troops hostage until we said, “Uncle.” When we finally said something that in
Chinese sounds a lot like “uncle,” they let them go.
We can kid ourselves all we want, but we have suffered a blow to our prestige and reputation, a loss that will reverberate throughout the world if we do not begin immediately to repair
the damage. The problem is not merely that we have lost face — though the Chinese are right to believe that great powers should place a high value on their reputation. The bigger
problem is that our reliability as defender...
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