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Advantage Bush

THE strategic competition that the Bush administration has declared as the correct description of Sino-American relations is facing its first test.

On Sunday, a spy plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter, whose pilot has been reported as missing. Washington has demanded immediate access to the 24-member crew and the return of the aircraft. Beijing has maintained a steadfast silence about the whereabouts of the first and its intentions with regard to the second. Is the confrontation between the world's sole superpower and its most serious applicant for superpower status now set to escalate?

Initial indications would suggest not. Despite the Americans' dropping the Clintonian concept of a strategic partnership with China, Qian Qichen, a deputy prime minister, sought in Washington last month to build bridges to the new Republican administration. The silence with which the leadership in Beijing has greeted the forced landing of the EP-3 spy plane betrays its uncertainty as to how to handle the matter. It would be easy to bang the nationalist drum by proclaiming American guilt in downing a fighter and landing on Chinese territory without permission. The Chinese government's ability to turn on and off the tap of street protest was demonstrated after the Americans bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.

Yet there are good reasons for holding back. To heighten confrontation with the United States could delay Chinese entry to the World Trade Organisation, a fundamental goal of the reformers. It could also push the Bush government towards supplying Taiwan with destroyers armed with the Aegis battle-management system. Third, the sight of the American embassy in Beijing surrounded by a baying mob could prejudice Chinese chances of landing the 2008 Olympic Games. Compared with the other two, this may seem a minor consideration, but one should not underestimate the blow to national pride that rejection would deal; it was bad enough when Beijing's bid for the millennial Games was turned down in favour of Sydney.

The Americans have knocked the ball into China's court by demanding the return of their plane and its crew. Beijing can hardly be expected to comply without first examining the equipment on board the plane and questioning the crew on the mid-air collision. Beyond that, if it is truly interested in a modus vivendi with the Bush administration, it will comply with Washington's wishes. In so doing, the leadership will have to contend with a generally hawkish military and with civilian jockeying for position as the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party approaches. It is then that President Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, the prime minister, and Li Peng, chairman of the National People's Congress, are expected to step down. Recourse to anti-American chauvinism is tempting to the politically ambitious. The extent to which it is checked will be a measure of Chinese statesmanship.

-- Anonymous, April 02, 2001