An Imperial Tale Has Wisdom Today : Hong Kong: This time, America might influence a different ending to the impasse between Britain and China.

A state of profound and mutual misunderstanding has arisen between Britain and China in recent months, which now threatens turmoil for Hong Kong and its 6 million Chinese inhabitants. When Li Peng, the Chinese premier, spoke angrily earlier this spring of Britain’s perfidy and trickery in attempting to introduce some measure of democracy during its final four years of rule, he was signaling serious problems ahead.

But the argument goes much deeper than this, with attendant dangers that are far more insidious. When viewed by Chinese eyes, the divisions over Hong Kong today are no less than the outward manifestations of a profound mutual incomprehension, of a schism that has divided Oriental and Occidental for centuries. By coincidence, the most memorable example of this took place exactly 200 years ago. If a dialogue of the deaf can have echoes, then what took place in China in 1792 and 1793 was a classic of its kind.

In 1792, King George III dispatched Lord Macartney, a diplomat and negotiator of peerless reputation, to suggest to the Manchu emperor the commencement of formal relations between the two nations. When, after much delay, the Manchu agreed to see the red-haired barbarian--which is how Chinese documents constantly referred to Macartney--Emperor Qianlong displayed merely polite disdain in public and in private, total contempt. There was nothing China needed, he declared, that required a relationship with so small and faraway a tributary state. He thanked Macartney for his time and trouble in sailing so far and bade the would-be legate begone.

In 1793, Macartney arrived back in London a humbled and humiliated man. He conveyed to the king and the prime minister the news that China considered itself so superior to the rest of mankind that to deal with even so grand a personage as King George was quite unthinkable. The English court was stunned by the impertinence. The subsequent cascade of events, had they been foreseen at the time, might have made both sides pause for thought.

An enraged and insulted Britain sent warships and wounded a China whose hubristic pride in its changelessness kept it in primitive military condition. The Opium Wars were fought; Hong Kong was ceded to Britain; the British and the French sacked Beijing. China, progressively weakened, was then carved up by the European powers--by France, Germany, Russia--and ultimately seized upon by the newly awakened Japan.

Following which Japan, as the world knows to its cost, became ever more greedy, coveting and devouring neighbor after neighbor until finally attacking Pearl Harbor and joining half the planet in total war. And all this was brought about, essentially, by the stubborn lack of understanding of two centuries before, when East and West first met, and growled at one another with incoherent dislike.

Much that could be of similar gravity might redound from today’s impasse. Britain, of course, is no match for China, no equal in any way. Except that Britain, and what it stands for--democracy for Hong Kong, a greater measure of freedom, guaranteed rights for its subjects there--is speaking of the spiritual icons of the West as a whole, of matters that in fact go way beyond the purview of Downing Street.

So if President Clinton’s Administration decides to subsume the case under his own human-rights-based agenda for China, it could well be that the West as a whole might eventually come to pit its moral strength against China. With a whole slew of options--relating to most-favored nation status, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, sanctions--the world could inveigh against China and wield by today’s standards as much power and venom as the Royal Navy’s little men o’war did 200 years ago.

And how then might China react? Might it strike back? Might there be internal division and strife, leading to its own internal prostration and collapse, with its neighbors and with others slavering over its carcass once again? The imagery is potent indeed, but is far from being wholly improbable. It all could happen. The nightmares that took us from the Boxer Rebellion and the revolution to the warlords, the Manchurian incident and then on to Hiroshima, could well spill over from such misunderstanding as this.

Which is why it is essential that, one way or another, the two sides embroiled in what seems currently a small and parochial dispute, involving a relatively few people in a faraway flyspeck of territory, should be settled properly, with all deliberate speed. And if necessary, with the interest and assistance of the one country of which China might yet take notice, the United States.

When Lord Macartney had his problems in 1793, America was but a youngster. But now, exactly two centuries on, it can display immense power and influence, of a magnitude that can impress even those who defiantly uphold the misunderstood traditions, as they would see them, of the most ancient Celestial Empire of China. That power and influence should now be brought into play.