China’s Stew of Issues

The Chinese ideogram for crisis has two meanings. One is danger, the other is opportunity. As still-unfolding events make clear, Beijing senses a major political opportunity in the crisis in Sino-American relations brought on by NATO’s mistaken bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

Anti-American violence in China stemming from the tragedy has abated, but the hostility expressed in inflammatory rhetoric has not. China’s state-directed media waited four days before reporting President Clinton’s prompt apology for the tragedy, meanwhile feeding nationalistic passions by accusing the United States of deliberately attacking China’s sovereignty. The popular anger that rolled across China and fueled protests in Beijing and at least 19 other cities was understandable. But the manipulation of that rage by a supposedly friendly government is another matter.

There’s no question that Beijing hopes to use the moral advantage it believes it gained from last Saturday’s bombing to improve its bargaining position with the United States on a spectrum of issues. This week London’s Financial Times quoted a senior foreign policy advisor to President Jiang Zemin as insisting “it is now up to the United States . . . to get the relationship back to normal.” Among the concessions Beijing seeks from Washington: approving China’s entry into the World Trade Organization without demanding any further major opening of China’s markets, setting aside allegations of Chinese nuclear spying in the United States and excluding Taiwan from the protection of the antimissile defense system the United States might offer its friends in Asia.

If these and other demands are pressed, Washington’s answer must be unequivocal. While appropriate compensation should be paid for the deaths, injuries and property damage in the embassy bombing, that event has nothing to do with the conditions for China entering the WTO or nuclear espionage or who should be covered by a missile defense system. Reaching a more normal relationship is not a matter of unilateral concessions. It will happen only when it is accepted as a shared responsibility.