Wash Post

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, April 12, 2001; Page A31

Somewhere in Beijing the other night, a top government official shot up in bed after hearing the following announcement: "Attention Kmart shoppers, do not buy Chinese-made sneakers, T-shirts, slacks, blouses, sweaters or anything else. Check the label and remember the Americans being held on Hainan Island. Have a nice day."

Did some official have that nightmare? Hard to say, but why not? China had much at stake in the standoff with the United States over that spy plane and its 24 crew members. Among other things, China and the United States did $116 billion in trade last year. In January alone, Americans ran a $7.2 billion trade deficit with China. We are talking real money here.

Given that amount of trade, given China's need for foreign investment, Beijing's behavior ever since the aircraft collision on April 1 has been bizarre. We all know by now that China was irritated by an increase in U.S. spy plane activity and that it had to account, somehow, for the loss of one of its planes and one of its pilots. Its anger, therefore, was explicable. Its behavior was not.

In some ways, this crisis has been about words -- "sorry," "regret," "apology" and so on. I have some different words to offer: "irrational," "nuts," "unpredictable" and just plain "weird." One or all of these applies to the way Beijing has conducted itself since its hot dog of a pilot, Wang Wei, got too close to that lumbering EP-3E spy plane. Almost instantly the Chinese government escalated an incident into a crisis -- one that will cost it plenty.

I am obliged now to say that Beijing has had some help. President Bush came on real strong right at the outset -- and only later tempered his words and let others do the talking. It didn't help, either, that he had come into office with what Beijing was entitled to see as an "attitude."

China was no longer going to be what the Clinton people called a "strategic partner." Henceforth it would be a "strategic competitor" -- and one that Washington would take its sweet time addressing. First Bush would turn his attention to other concerns, even other countries in Asia, as if any of them were as important as China. With both China and Russia, Bush would do a modified Teddy Roosevelt: speak loudly and carry a big stick.

That approach has now been discredited. It was not saber-rattling that freed the crew of the American plane but the ability to come up with more ways of issuing an apology (without saying the word "apology") than anyone but Alex Trebek could think of. It was also clear that our allies, a bit peeved at the Bush administration's unilateralism (Macedonia, CO2 emissions, Kyoto treaty), managed to keep a check on their outrage over Beijing's behavior. As with the budget, tax reductions and, probably, a great deal else, Bush leads -- and no one much follows.

But Bush has been vindicated in his visceral distrust of China. The explanations, rationalizations and excuses for Beijing's behavior seemed inadequate to the circumstances. It was acting in a childish way, throwing a tantrum when a mere diplomatic note would have sufficed. It's not, after all, as if China is not in the spy game itself. It spies, we spy, everyone spies. What was it trying to gain from insisting that Uncle Sam grovel?

China is too big, too populous and too dynamic to ignore. But this is the nation that responded to a student demonstration in Tiananmen Square with mass murder. This is a regime that arrests members of the Falun Gong movement, jails them and occasionally kills them -- all because it cannot control them. It represses Christian churches and continues its occupation of Tibet. This is a regime that has lately taken to arresting visitors from America of Chinese descent and accusing them of espionage. This is a regime that is not democratic, that is totalitarian, that lies to its own people and whose leadership, while not always unified or coherent, features some very nasty folks.

That is the impression most Americans are going to take from this episode. That is a consequence that was entirely predictable. China could only lose. Its trade might suffer. Its archenemy and prime obsession, Taiwan, could only benefit, maybe getting every weapons system on its wish list. People who pay little attention to foreign affairs, whose memory of Tiananmen is faint and who know nothing of the Falun Gong, were suddenly focused. They were e-mailing their outrage to companies like Kmart and passing up Chinese goods in the aisles of stores all across America.

Attention, Chinese leadership: You lost, big time.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2001