Thursday, April 5, 2001

By Michael A. Lev, Chicago Tribune

BEIJING — The reaction in China to the collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet has been similar to the reaction in America — except completely reversed.

In China, it is the American plane that was responsible for the accident, that violated international law and that represented a grave threat to safety and security, not the Chinese jet. Here, the worry is over the loss of a Chinese pilot, not the detention of 24 American crewmembers. Here, the bully is America. The victim is China.

"America is a troublemaker," said Guo Qun Feng, a 30-year-old travel agency employee who blames the United States for the incident and wants to hear an apology.

While the United States seeks to pressure China to release the crew and its damaged plane before the incident does real harm to relations between the two countries, China has been pursuing its own agenda: Pin responsibility on the United States.

The tactic plays well at home, in part because national pride is at stake, and that is something the vast majority of Chinese agree on, even those Chinese who do not agree with their government on other issues.

If the American relationship with China is characterized at least partly by mistrust of the communist government and its military, and marked by tension over human-rights issues and the future of Taiwan, there is a strong measure of distaste in China for America.

There are many educated Chinese who admire American democracy and freedom, who love Hollywood movies, McDonald’s and the NBA. But many of these same people also resent America’s role as the world’s sole superpower and have little sympathy for the fate of an American airplane laden with sophisticated listening devices flying close to China’s coast and eavesdropping on China’s military.

"The Chinese have a complex mixture of feelings about the U.S. — admiration, envy, respect and a genuine sense of friendship; yet there is noticeably growing resentment and even anti-Americanism," said Fei-Ling Wang of Georgia Tech University, co-editor of "In the Eyes of a Dragon: China Views the World."

All these emotions help explain why there is a diplomatic standoff over the fate of the 21 men and three women who were aboard the U.S. Navy’s EP-3E surveillance plane. The dispute reflects a basic disagreement over how the world should work and each nation’s place in it.

While China and the United States have numerous common interests — most importantly a vibrant and growing economic relationship — they are kept apart by a competition for influence in Asia and fundamental differences such as China’s insistence on eventually retaking Taiwan.

Even the government’s harshest Chinese critics agree with their leaders that Taiwan is a breakaway island province of China, and they have little patience for what they regard as Washington’s meddling in an internal Chinese issue.

At its core, the confrontation between the two rivals is a conflict between political systems — American democracy versus one-party communist authoritarianism, though the Beijing government would never use that word.

While the Chinese continue to accept their government because they don’t have a choice, many also support it because it is reforming the economy, opening the country to outside influence and giving individuals greater personal freedom.

What binds the country together is a combination of propaganda from the state-run media telling the public what to support, and a powerful sense of national pride fed by China’s rich culture and long history.

The Communist Party rose to power by promising to unify a country that had been split into fiefdoms and carved up by outsiders. The party or the public has never forgot that fact. Today the system continues to be calibrated to look strong both to the Chinese and the rest of the world, said Phillip Saunders, a China scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.

"The regime uses nationalistic sentiment to justify its hold on power, arguing that China needs the party’s strong leadership to stand up to the outside world," Saunders said. And the public then judges the party based on its ability to fulfill that promise, he said.

"In modern China, nationalism is an important political resource," agreed Dong Guo Qiang, a historian at Nanjing University.

"It’s a feeling partially caused by the Western countries. We know the history."

The result, scholars say, is a system colored by pride and paranoia that is primed to pursue its own destiny and to challenge the United States. This explains why so many Chinese would risk war to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence — because they consider it the last missing piece of a whole China — and why so many Chinese do not believe the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade by the United States in 1999 was an accident.

Today it explains why so many Chinese find it easy to ignore the U.S. government’s version of events surrounding the collision and accept the Chinese government’s version.

According to the United States, the EP-3E surveillance plane was on a routine mission flying over international waters when it was shadowed by two Chinese fighters, one of which came too close and bumped the American aircraft. The fighter crashed, while the damaged U.S. plane signaled "Mayday" and headed for the nearest airfield, a Chinese military airport on Hainan Island.

The U.S. government said the speedy fighter had an obligation to stay a safe distance from the bigger, slower turbo-prop plane, but in the last few months Chinese planes have been flying more aggressively.

When the American plane landed, the United States said China should have respected the sovereignty of the aircraft and its crew, helped facilitate repairs and let them go.

China, from the beginning, offered a contradictory story. The government said the American plane veered into the Chinese fighter, and then entered Chinese airspace and landed without permission. China said the American plane’s actions represented a threat to Chinese security and it rejected the idea of granting the plane or crew immunity. Beijing said it would hold the crew until it completes an investigation, and suggested it had every right to inspect the plane, and it has demanded an apology.

The government backed up its story with its own interpretation of international law. With China’s state-run media backing up the government’s story, it has been an easy sell to the public.

"Of course America should be blamed," said Lai Li, a 29-year-old caterer. "The American plane entered Chinese territory without approval from the Chinese government."

Lai said the American plane was operating too close to Chinese territory and that in general, America is always trying to play the role of the world’s policeman. "It’s improper," he said.

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