Tuesday, April 10, 2001

By Lisa Burgess, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — As the days stretch on with no release in sight for the 24 detained crew members of the U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the China Sea last week, Beijing’s insistence on a U.S. apology for the incident could bring tensions between Washington and Beijing to a boil.

The Chinese military reportedly already has dismantled the EP-3E Aries II as it sits on the runway on Hainan Island, and U.S. Navy officials have resigned themselves to the loss of at least some of the aircraft’s sensitive technology.

What, then, does Beijing have to gain by detaining the crew until President Bush offers an apology for the incident, which the U.S. government insists occurred in international airspace?

If China’s leaders, especially Chinese president Jiang Zemin, play their cards right, they will emerge stronger than ever from this face-off with the United States. If they appear to buckle under U.S. pressure, their grip on all of China is threatened, said I.J. Singh, a professor of political economy and national security at the National War College in Washington, D.C.

"This is a critical moment for the Chinese government," Singh said. "Another generation is about to come to power. Every time this happens, there is a party struggle — the right wing vs. the moderates.

"This incident plays into the hands of the right wing — especially the military, which traditionally has the [premier position] on the right."

China is a country torn between two paths to the future: open trade with the rest of the world, leading inexorably toward, if not democracy, at least a more open government; or an aggressive turn back into itself, fueled by a nationalistic view of China as the world’s victim, with the United States as its principal enemy.

Singh, who spent 10 years as the World Bank’s chief economist for China before joining the faculty of the War College, said that China’s current leaders — "the last of the long marchers," who came to power with Mao Tse-tung in the late 1940s — are desperate not to appear weak to their own people.

"It’s the internal audience they don’t want to lose face with," Singh said.

In the last 20 years, China has made enormous strides changing from a farm-based to a trade-based economy.

Carefully, using the Soviet Union’s chaotic transition to a free market as an example of how not to progress, China’s Marxist leaders gradually have loosened the state’s hold on small businesses, while keeping full control of critical technology industries.

"The key to China’s progress has been wise policies that slowly opened up the market," Singh said.

The results of those policies have been astounding. China’s gross domestic product has grown by an almost unheard-of 8 to 9 percent every year since 1978.

But the same economic growth that is making China a force to be reckoned with on the world market also is provoking calls for a more open government.

"There is a major force supporting [political] reform, versus the last of the ‘long marchers’ who supported Mao," Singh said. "The Chinese [communist] party has to do a balancing act."

Like Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and other international figures, China’s leaders have found that the best way to keep the political reformers quiet is to encourage nationalism. The current stand-off is tailor-made for just that purpose, Singh said.

"There is a feeling in the air of ‘We have stood up; we are becoming an economic power; we are modernizing our military. You can’t humiliate China anymore’," Singh said.

Back to April's stories
Page Two news roundup
Stories from March, 2001
Stories from February, 2001
Stories from January, 2001
Stories from December, 2000
Stories from November, 2000
Stories from October, 2000
Stories from August and September, 2000
Stories from June and July, 2000
Home