The PRC Riots in Psychic Defense
It's been eight days since the bombing, and cities across China have
calmed down to their normal pre-riot chaos. When the U.S. Ambassador emerged
from the Embassy in Beijing where he'd been trapped for four days, he was not
smiling. He made a brief and forgettable statement, but you could tell by the
look in his eyes he was thinking "Christ, for this I spent my professional
life jockeying for position?" There were some ugly words directed at random
foreigners, but nobody that I knew got beaten up. My friend told me that she saw
a "No Americans" sign in a taxi window. The anger and frustration that was
seen this past week should, in time, return to its normal state of being an
unspoken tension floating just beneath the surface.
For the westerner, it would be difficult to imagine that the three air to surface missiles fired at the Chinese embassy in Belgrade could have been anything other than a hideous mistake. Diplomatically, the attack went over about as well as a turd in a punchbowl. Militarily, the air strikes did nothing to advance Nato’s cause. But in China, the streets are abuzz with theories.
"The American government cannot stand to see a strong China exerting influence anywhere, and these strikes were meant to destabilize our influence" is the most common one.
I have to agree with the first part of that one, but not the second. "We wouldn't use missiles to destabilize your influence in Europe" I recently told a taxi driver "That's what the CIA is for…it’s more cost effective".
Another theory is that America wanted to silence the Chinese journalists who were living in the embassy to keep them from telling the Serb's side of the story. This seems highly unlikely. Making statements like "There is no ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the 750,000 people currently crossing into Albania and Macedonia are on a cross border nature walk" Serbian spokespersons are hardly winning over converts. Perhaps if the Serbs hired Johnny Cochran as an advocate…"Those Kosovars are not in flight /their out for Star Wars opening night"
Another reason that the Chinese refuse to believe that the bombing was an
accident is that they have become convinced of America's technological
perfection. I watched an interview with a physics professor from Beijing
University on Chinese television, in which he stated that it was unthinkable
that the bombing was unintended. "We have seen films of American "smart
bombs" being sent down chimneys. How could they have hit the embassy building
unintentionally?" The idea of a smart bomb hitting the wrong target is as
unbelievable as that of Rambo being taken out by a troop of cub scouts.
Some theories are kind of wacky. A very earnest university
student told me that "the American government wants to destabilize all of
Europe because they fear that the Euro will become stronger than the dollar".
I responded by telling him that we had more than enough missiles to take out
Berlin, Paris and London when the time came. I asked him how the Embassy
bombing would help destabilize Europe, and he thought for a moment, then said
"Imperialism is not logical!"
So much for the voice of reason.
Then, too, is the issue of why the Chinese government was so vehemently against NATO intervention in the first place. China sees the Kosovo conflict as one of an ethnic republic attempting to break away from the motherland, and is uncomfortable with the thought that foreign powers might intervene in what they view as an internal struggle. China has its own breakaway republics to contend with, Taiwan chiefly among them. "If we let America intervene in Kosovo," goes common thinking "then they'd do the same in Taiwan."
The Taiwanese themselves take little comfort in this. Milosovec may be a bully, but he doesn't have long range nukes. China does, or will as soon as they've finished downloading the schematics from the Internet.
This latest crisis has only brought long standing grievances to the surface. Most Chinese people I've spoken too have gone to great lengths to assure me that they have nothing against Americans per se. They are just sick to death of hearing America brand their government, as riddled with problems and corruption as they admit it is, as the greatest source of evil and tyranny since Stalin. And when pressed on specifics, the average lao bai shing ("old hundred names", the Chinese equivalent of John & Jane Q. Public) is clever enough to answer with specifics of their own.
"What about human rights in China?" You'll say to one lao bai
shing
"Why are 35% of Americas black people in prison?" Is what
they'll answer.
"Why donut you return Tibet to the Tibetans?" You'll say to another
"Tibet is part of China" replies Old Hundred Names "Why donut you
return
your whole country to the Indians!"
Most Chinese people donut trust their government very much, but they trust ours even less. They think of the U.S. as "The policeman of the world," the only point on which the American government seems to be in perfect agreement on. But the Chinese have deep suspicion of police in general, and deeper misgivings about whose brand of justice is being enforced at any given moment.
Logical or not, the Chinese do have an ugly history of humiliation at the hands, feet and gunboats of foreign powers on which to base its suspicions. For a good chunk of this century, China itself was divided up between various foreign powers, and old hundred names is still kind of touchy about it. To understand the way that Chinese people feel, I ask my readers to do the following:
Imagine that 20 % of America had been under legal foreign domination for the first half of this century, and that New York had been declared "a Canadian protectorate". It is common knowledge that once there were signs around Central Park which read No dogs or Americans allowed.
Now imagine that the Canadian military, assisting the Lapps in their battle to secede from Norway, have "accidentally" blown up the American Embassy in Oslo.
How many days before you're able just to "forgive and forget"?
May 17, 1999
Joshua Samuel Brown
Originally Published as an op-ed
piece in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle