Restoring normality to US-China relations

On April 1, a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet. on On April 5, while the two states were still negotiating over the accident, Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) began a visit to six Latin American countries.

There are two possible interpretations of Jiang's decision to go ahead with the trip: one, he passed full authority for handling the incident to his would-be successor, Vice President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). If Hu could successfully handle the case in Jiang's absence, he could consolidate his status as successor.

Two, Jiang was repeating an old pattern -- Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself left Beijing when the chaos unleashed by the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命) first broke out, leaving his successor, former president Liu Shaoqi (劉少奇), to deal with it. Liu, however, was later left by Mao to die in prison for implementing the "reactionary capitalist path"(資產階級反動路線) during that period.

Perhaps both interpretations are somewhat generous. The reason Jiang dared to leave Beijing for 12 days was that everyone thought the incident would not be resolved within a short period of time. Of course, this has now been proven incorrect. But since the US spy plane was in the hands of the Chinese government, Beijing may have believed that it held the initiative. Hu, more than likely, frequently sought Jiang's advice on the case.

Since US reconnaissance in international air space does not violate international law and responsibility for the collision is not made any clearer by Beijing's one-sided account, a reasonable solution would be for the two states to jointly investigate the case. The Chinese government, however, is hardly likely to agree to such an approach, since it is only used to the practice of "What I say counts" (一言堂).

The US said it was "very sorry" for the collision. Very sorry, however, is not enough for many Chinese. To resolve the case completely, therefore, the Beijing needs to deal with some internal problems.

The most difficult problem is rising Chinese nationalism. Although the Chinese government wished to use the case to shift people's focus away from the power struggle inside the Chinese Communist Party, it also worried that the situation might spin out of control. After all, China relies upon the US much more than the US depends upon China. Beijing not only has to consider US arms sales to Taiwan, but also needs to consider the huge market, capital and technologies provided by the US -- not to mention the fact that it is restrained by US military power from taking any reckless action.

The best solution is for the US, now that it has said sorry, to pay compensation. The US, of course, will be responsible for repairing the damaged spy plane since the Chinese are incapable of repairing it. Though the crew has been handed over to the US, I believe the case is yet to be resolved completely.

Consider the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Although Bill Clinton apologized six times and paid a large sum in compensation, the Chinese government to this day constantly reproaches the US and urges the US government to "find out the truth" behind the incident.

Paul Lin is a political commentator on Hong Kong affairs currently living in the US.

Translated by Eddy Chang