This follows the precedent of the Shanghai Communique, which was the basis for the re-establishment of diplomatic contacts in 1972 after an interruption of more than 20 years. In that document the United States and China stated opposing views on a whole series of issues but came together on some agreed principles. The most notable ones were common resistance to hegemony–a code word for Soviet expansionism–and an American acknowledgment that it was not challenging the view of the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait that there was but one China (the then official positions of both Beijing and Taipei).
A comparable outcome is likely this time because the leaders in Beijing surely understand that there is a point–and not many days away–at which American public opinion would begin to regard the detained crew members as hostages. After that point, the issue would turn into a confrontation undermining future relations no matter how it was ultimately settled. And it must also be evident that the Bush administration’s deft handling of the crisis is giving concrete content to what it has called a “competitive relationship” by including in it significant elements of cooperation.
Precisely because the incident of the reconnaissance plane is likely to mark the beginning of an extended dialogue, it is important to understand the cultural gap existing between the two sides on the way to approach diplomacy.
American leaders are brought up in a society that over its little more than two centuries of history has regarded peace and progress as normal. Hence they emphasize personal good will and personal relationships as important elements in resolving international disputes. In its continuous history spanning five millennia, China has witnessed too many upheavals and tragedies to rely on the good will of individuals who, in the context of history, are by definition transient. The United States has been able to overcome its challenges by a combination of idealism, willpower, organization and a benign geography. China has many great achievements to its credit, but it has also come up against its limits, encountering problems that could be overcome only by endurance. China’s approach to policy is skeptical and prudent, America’s optimistic and missionary. China’s sense of time beats to an altogether different rhythm from America’s. When an American is asked to date a historical event, he refers to a specific day on the calendar; when a Chinese describes his history, he places it within a dynasty. And of the 14 imperial dynasties, at least eight have each lasted longer than the entire history of the United States.
Americans think in terms of concrete solutions to specific problems. The Chinese think in terms of a process that has no precise culmination. Americans believe that international disputes result either from misunderstandings or ill will; the remedy for the former is persuasion–occasionally quite insistent–and, for the latter, defeat or destruction of the evildoer. The Chinese approach is impersonal, patient and aloof; the Middle Kingdom has a horror of appearing to be a supplicant. Where Washington looks to good faith and good will as the lubricant of international relations, Beijing assumes that statesmen have done their homework and will understand subtle indirections. This is why in the current dispute the Chinese have insisted that the United States “should”–not “must”–apologize, indicating a strong preference, not a condition. To Americans, Chinese leaders seem polite but aloof and condescending. To the Chinese, Americans appear erratic and somewhat frivolous.
Chinese negotiating tactics also reflect China’s historical experience, which in the last three centuries moved it from being dominant in its region to being the humiliated subject of colonialism. Thus Chinese diplomacy exhibits two styles simultaneously. As heirs of the Middle Kingdom, Chinese diplomats can be ingratiating. The other side is flattered by being admitted to the Chinese “club” as an “old friend,” a posture which makes disagreement humanly more complicated. When they conduct Middle Kingdom diplomacy, the Chinese maneuver to induce their opposite numbers to propose the Chinese preference so that Chinese acquiescence can appear as the granting of a boon to the interlocutor. Thus on my secret visit to China in 1971, Zhou Enlai sought to get me to ask for an invitation for President Nixon to come to Beijing. We settled on a formula that made a reference to a general Nixon desire to visit China expressed sometime before he was elected president and coupled it with a specific invitation by the Chinese leaders.
But when faced with what it considers a legacy of colonialism, China is prone to bully in order to demonstrate its imperviousness to pressure. Any hint of condescension or sign that Chinese territorial integrity is not being taken seriously evokes strong–and to Americans, seemingly excessive–reaction. Hence the prolonged demonstrations of outrage about the bombing of the embassy in Belgrade and the initial intransigence over the reconnaissance plane.
The contrasting styles of diplomacy produced a confrontational atmosphere in the early stages of the recent crisis. The administration said the American airplane at a Chinese military airport was protected by sovereign immunity and demanded its immediate release. Whatever the legal positions, this implication that the reconnaissance plane enjoyed a protected legal status was bound to produce a strong Chinese response. But once Secretary Powell and President Bush moved the issue to a level of human compassion and practical resolution, the way to a constructive outcome was open.
When that is reached, the crisis may turn out to lay the basis for a new, mature and above all stable relationship. Partly because of the difficulty the two sides have had in understanding each other’s culture and code of conduct, they have rarely succeeded in getting Sino-American relationships on a steady course for any extended period of time. In the early 1900s, America’s approach to China was heavily influenced by missionaries and traders, both largely oblivious to the humiliation Chinese society felt when subjected to the colonialist pressures of the European powers. In the 1930s and during the Second World War, China was idealized as a victim of Japanese aggression and as a heroic democratic ally. After the communist victory in the civil war, China was transformed in the American public mind into the incarnation of ideological and strategic hostility. A combination of Maoist militant ideology, China’s intervention in the Korean War, American distaste for Beijing’s domestic institutions and the interposition of the American Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait produced a period of nearly a quarter century in which the two countries had no diplomatic relations and very little contact of any kind, except mutual vituperation.
Now we are in yet a different era, one that requires stability for long-term strategic and economic reasons. The Chinese landscape is a complicated one. The original Chinese leaders we dealt with in the 1970s were, in their conduct, more in the tradition of the Middle Kingdom than the present leaders, who are running a country whose economy is largely shaped by the market and by modern technology. The next leaders will be more modern still. China faces a number of long-term problems. First, the economic success requires constant political adaptation. Secondly, by 2003 almost all current leaders are required to leave office, which would be the first constitutional change in a communist country. Thirdly, the PLA, which will surely play a major role in the succession debate, is more assertively nationalistic than the other Chinese leaders.
In America, two schools of thought dominate contemporary debate. The view of the Clinton administration was summed up in the slogans “engagement” and “strategic partnership.” Based on the Wilsonian premise that a world composed of democracies can hold no enemies–at least none prepared to vindicate their views with force–the multiplication of contacts on trade, environment, science and technology is believed to strengthen the forces favoring international cooperation and internal pluralism.
The opposing point of view regards China as a morally flawed, inevitable adversary–at the moment with respect to Taiwan, eventually the Western Pacific, and, in time, the global equilibrium. According to this school of thought, the United States should therefore deal with China not as a strategic partner but as it did with the Soviet Union during the cold war: as a rival and a challenge, reducing trade wherever possible to nonstrategic items, creating an alliance of Asian states to help America share the burden for the defense of Asia and to contain China. Advocates of this point of view would treat Taiwan as an independent country and a military outpost and, in practice, scrap the “one-China” policy on which Sino-American relations have been based since the early 1970s.
The fundamental question for President Bush is whether either of these approaches really meets America’s needs. It is one thing to reject a strategic partnership that never functioned; it is another to adopt the cold-war containment policy as it had been applied to the Soviet Union and to act as if China were a permanent adversary. Such a policy would isolate America in Asia and in the world. America will resist attempts by any power to achieve hegemony, as it proved in three wars in the last century. The challenge is to devise a policy open to cooperation but decisive in resisting aggression. Confrontation with China should be a last resort, not the strategic choice. The Bush administration’s handling of the crisis over the reconnaissance plane is a good first step in that direction.
