Taking a closer look

Now that the standoff between the United States and China appears to be winding down, it is worthwhile to try to glean some lessons about Chinese behavior. It was very generous of them to agree to release the crew members on 'humanitarian' grounds, but we need to understand why there was a standoff at all.

(1) The Chinese government is never wrong. It never apologizes. All problems affecting China, foreign and domestic, are someone else's fault. A few days ago, someone commented to me that China's infallibility is a lot like the Pope's. But there's a big difference: Apparently the Pope is wrong more often. The Chinese Communist Party represents the logical end of a victimization complex: If it's our fault, it's someone else's fault. If we don't really know whose fault it is, it's someone else's fault.

This has played itself out again and again through the 50-odd years of the People's Republic of China. The Gang of Four caused the Cultural Revolution. The students massacred in Tiananmen Square were counter-revolutionaries who brought death down on themselves. Any discontent in Xinjiang or Tibet is inevitably caused by insidious foreign influence. Don't know what really happened between the EP-3 and the F-8 over the South China Sea? It must be America's fault.

At the same time, China attempts to use others' perceived culpability to its own advantage. If it has a complete inability to ask for forgiveness, it also has the inability to completely forgive. In China's eyes, Japan has never apologized fully for World War II. But China will never accept a Japanese apology because that would mean it could no longer extract guilt-ridden concessions from the Japanese government. The reason China accepted the United States' non-apology is because it was quickly becoming obvious that were there to be any independent analysis of events, China would be so clearly in the wrong that it would look as if it had no shame.

(2) Too often, Americans think there are two factions in the government: There is the hard-line faction implacably opposed to America in every way. There is the pro-America faction that would love to have closer ties with the United States, economically and politically, if only it didn't have to constantly fight a rear-guard action with the hard-liners. President Jiang Zemin, conventional wisdom says, doesn't want to look weak in front of the hard-liners, which is why he has demanded an apology from the United States without knowing any of the facts first. Implied here is the idea that, unfettered by hard-liners, Jiang would just return the plane and the crew right away, the United States and China would tip their hats to each other and both would happily skip away, whistling a merry little tune. But this is a very American concept. Again and again, we seem to think that there is someone fighting for us within the leadership of hostile countries, and everything would be better if only they were given a chance. But Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji are just as nationalistic as any other Chinese leader. Why would they be any more willing to sell out China (in their minds) than so-called hard-liners? It is much safer to assume that no one in the Chinese government likes America or at least American principles. American money is just dandy.

(3) A recent article in the online magazine Slate asked why Americans always attribute diabolical cleverness to the leaders of America's adversaries yet assume our own leaders are morons. In this present crisis, the media have been chock-a-block full of stories outlining fiendishly clever and intricate plans the Chinese are supposedly carrying out, all with the goal of undermining the United States. But in all likelihood, the two planes collided, the U.S. plane landed in Hainan, and the Chinese had no idea what to do so they switched into default mode. They assumed it must have been the United States' fault in some way, demanded an apology without any investigation, stripped the plane, detained the crew at gunpoint, ratcheted up the pathetic propaganda and ridiculous claims in the People's Daily and official statements and essentially tried to milk any concessions they could out of the United States. In the short-term, this might have worked, but it clearly shows Jiang and his Not-Ready-for-Prime-time Boys cannot play with the big boys on the world stage. This is tin-pot dictator stuff, not the actions of a budding superpower.

We would do well to take heed of these lessons so we'll be ready when the next crisis comes. Justin Hastings is a Wilson School major from Bedford, Mass. He can be reached at justinh@princeton.edu.