Posted on: Wednesday, May 30, 2001

Commentary
U.S. is still mishandling plane incident

By David Polhemus
Advertiser Editorial Writer

BEIJING — Inflexibility, if not downright stubbornness, has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's handling of every aspect of the April 1 collision of the U.S. Navy EP-3 spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet.

That's true not only of Washington's attitude following the collision and during the ensuing negotiations to recover the crew and later the aircraft, but of the Pentagon's insistence on sending the plane on its mission in the first place, in spite of repeated warnings by the Chinese.

Indeed, the Honolulu-based Pacific Command has strongly advocated military-to-military engagement with the Chinese for well over a decade, arguing that such contact could help avoid just such incidents. It's a useless exercise, however, if the exchange falls on deaf ears.

For its part, the Chinese side since the collision has been unbending on some aspects of the affair. But their release of the crew of 24 Americans 11 days later obviously represents a whole lot more give than the Americans have offered.

After the crew came home, the incident may have "dropped off the radar screen," as a Western diplomat here put it, for most Americans.

But not for the White House and the Pentagon, which want to recover the damaged $80 million aircraft, which is still parked on a runway on Hainan island.

And not for the Chinese, who believe they badly lost face in the incident.

Although the two sides disagree over which aircraft's maneuvering directly caused the collision, they both freely refer to it as an accident. Certainly the loss of the Chinese fighter pilot (hot dog or not) was tragic, and the emergency landing of the American crew was harrowing. But in terms of the material damage done, one wonders why it hasn't been resolved with the same no-fault philosophy as a fender-bender in Honolulu — especially in light of the many benefits of smooth bilateral relations jeopardized by this prolonged dispute.

Yet in the continuing negotiations following the collision, the American side has been unbending from the start. "We have a right to spy on China from that airspace," the Pentagon keeps saying in so many words. "Lots of other countries do it. We must have that data no matter who objects. And we demand the return of that airplane right now because it's ours."

"How childish," several Chinese have told me in informal conversations.

They make a valid point, perhaps, but it's the Chinese whose feelings are bruised.

The immediate response by President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to the collision, in the view of Huang Qing, deputy director of international news at the official People's Daily, "was to ignore the (Chinese) pilot and demand release of the American crew. This attitude in the area of foreign relations lacks the usual politeness.

"This means," he went on, "that the Americans have attached no importance to others while attaching a great importance to its own citizens."

As a result, the ongoing embroglio about whether the Pentagon could fly the EP-3 out of Hainan or dismantle it and crate it up for shipment has been all about pride, said Yu Jiafu, director-general of foreign affairs at Xinhua News Agency. There is no material reason for China's insistence on one means of removal over another.

But in a way that it could not have anticipated, actions the Chinese leadership took more than a decade ago have tied its hands today. In order to divert public anger from the Tiananmen bloodletting in 1989, the government began promoting a nationalism of resentment, recalling a history of humiliation by foreign powers. Unexpectedly, President Jiang Zemin now finds himself being hotly chastised, in the quasi-public manner now common, by his own people for giving much and receiving nothing in the EP-3 affair.

Although the Chinese government claimed the U.S. side delivered an apology in exchange for release of the crew, most of the population is now aware, through the Internet and then word of mouth, of the actual wording of the American document. And that makes them almost as mad at their leadership as they are at the Bush administration.

"After Tiananmen, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and now the P-3," said an American businessman based here, "the people are incensed by their treatment by the United States. The government now can't afford to be seen as weak by its people."

Not every observer in Beijing appreciates the Chinese leadership's constraints. "The EP-3 incident was mishandled by China from the get-go," said a Western diplomat toeing the American line.

"It was an unfortunate accident," he went on, "but the consequences have grown. The airplane is still here. The longer the plane is on the ground, the longer it becomes a lightning rod for somebody in the U.S. to use against China. And it's a valuable piece of property."

But even this diplomat recognizes Beijing's lack of wiggle room. "It's a difficult issue for China because of their hierarchical leadership and (a year or so from now) their impending leadership change."

What's lacking here is vision and finesse in Washington. Continuing improvement of the U.S.-China relationship is too important to let a crippled airplane get in the way of it. And it's plain that Beijing can't endorse a solution that doesn't make it look like a winner in the eyes of people, so Bush's people need to offer it a way out of its dilemma.

A distinguished and canny professor of Chinese history at UH-Manoa suggests this brilliant solution to the ongoing EP-3 dispute: Bush should thank Beijing for taking such good care of our crew for 11 days and, out of gratitude for returning them home safely, he should present them with the EP-3 aircraft as a gift.

Of course, no one in Washington would take such an idea seriously; most Americans I've mentioned it to think it's a stupid idea, or at least un-American.

But that's too bad. For starters, the damaged plane is now worth far less than bluebook value, and it would save us the trouble of fetching it home. But more important, it would present a gesture the Chinese leadership couldn't refuse, but which would leave them feeling burdened by an obligation they could never figure out how to repay.

You have to give face, in other words, to get face.

Advertiser editorial writer David Polhemus is currently traveling in Asia as a Jefferson Fellow from the East-West Center.