Asia Watch: China Nationalist

...Nor, of course, will it be...

...Authorities were surprised by the outburst of nationalist feeling expressed in September by Hong Kong Chinese over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands, which are uninhabited yet claimed by both China and Japan...

...The reasons are as revealing about China's internal condition as they are about the country's growing sensitivity to bad publicity abroad...

...But a populist nationalism that supports China's leadership in a strong stand on the issue of Taiwan, say, or Tibet, is a dangerous animal that could easily turn against its handlers...

...Even though China has backed away from the aggressive rhetoric it tossed about earlier this year, it worries that Taiwan's "separatists" will gain the upper hand before a political deal can be arranged on peaceful reunification...

...0* The American Spectator • December 19 9 6 67...

...Universities and colleges were also instructed to prohibit anti-Japanese protests...

...Visiting diplomats, business executives, and academics made it clear to Chinese officials that the visibly thuggish approach was not only aggravating the very Taiwanese sentiments they were intended to subdue, but was also alarming much of Asia in the process...

...Since April it has gone way down...

...As Hong Kong officials and human rights activists complained angrily, the foreign ministry in Peking retreated...

...President Jiang Zemin can't figure out the "bridge to the twenty-first century" any more readily than most Americans...

...This may come as a surprise to some observers of China, who recall the long memory of the country's leaders when it comes to foreigners who have befriended their nation...

...The Chinese want a U.S...

...Still, Carter was an odd fish to the Chinese...

...You Westerners don't understand us...

...He kept bringing up human rights, a commodity in exceedingly short supply in 1970's China...

...At an October party plenum presided over by Jiang, a concluding document complained about the "neglect" by authorities of "ideological education and cultural progress" (translation: explaining why anyone should still believe in Communism), even as they were busy "promoting material progress...

...On the other hand, too loose a rein might encourage the inhabitants of other Chinese cities to believe that they too could operate without constantly seeking approval from Peking...

...China's crude intimidation of Taiwan earlier this year—the threats, missile firings, and navy maneuvers—not only backfired in Taiwan itself, but aroused deep anxiety about China's regional ambitions among the country's neighbors...

...Nationalism replaces Communism as a reason to worry...

...They have come to view Bill Clinton as the more likely man to lead that kind of America...

...No, China simply wants a president who is eager to develop even further the business relationship now overwhelmingly in its favor...

...The Chinese were grateful to Jimmy DAVID AIKMAN, a former Time reporter in East Asia, is the author of Pacific Rim (Little, Brown...

...But you can't keep the hype going all the time...

...ASIA WATCH by David Airman China Nationalist Is China interested in who wins the U.S...

...In practice, anointed political successors tend to be discarded as soon as a respectful period of thinking about their dead predecessors has passed by...

...Like the last emperor of a dying dynasty, Deng's mere physical existence limits the scope of policy changes that any of his official successors can attempt...

...George Orwell would have understood...

...All of these issues have emerged in China's media, in party and government meetings, and in China's nudges and hints to visiting foreigners...

...Spiritual civilization is a meaningless term," a Chinese academic said...

...that is only nominally interested in what happens in East Asia —above all, one led by a president with no serious convictions about what happens in Hong Kong and Taiwan...

...How does he translate the immense prestige and popularity of Deng—both the victim of and eventual victor over Mao's insane collectivism —into his own personal legitimacy...

...Still, China's foreign policy has veered from hot to cold to hot again, sometimes precipitously, in recent decades...

...Jiang is talented: he once ran Shanghai, a tricky city to control, and can quote English and Russian poets fluently...

...There would be no change in the "one nation, two systems" policy that will permit Hong Kong's way of life to go unchanged, he declared, but then added: "Hong Kong people will have full freedom of expression, but all freedoms must be within the limits allowed by law...

...isolation of the Middle Kingdom, as well as providing a nuclear insurance policy against any Soviet adventurism...

...Much of the sentiment is anti-Japanese, involving territorial disputes over islands in the East China Sea...

...Until Nixon's 1972 visit, there had been periodic nasty hints from Moscow that the Soviets just might like to nuke China back to the Ching dynasty...

...The tortuous line the Chinese now have to navigate was well illustrated by a mini-furor provoked by Foreign Minister Qian Qichen's warning to the Asian Wall Street Journal that, after Chinese rule was established, no future commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre would be permitted within Hong Kong...

...A second problem will be the absorption of Hong Kong after July1997...

...Taiwan is an issue that can wait for a while...

...Unlike Nixon, he also lacked the ability, in their view, to distinguish between the essential and the secondary in world politics...

...Three major questions face the Chinese leadership today, not least of which is the matter of what the official press delicately calls "the new era" — that moment when Deng Xiaoping is finally, literally dead...

...That nationalism is not to be discounted...

...The problem, the document declared, "has not yet been resolved...

...In theory, president Jiang Zemin is the anointed successor to Deng...

...Neither Mao nor his eventual successor in supreme power Deng Xiaoping ever forgot the debt they owed Richard Nixon for ending the U.S...

...We want a peaceful development in Asia," he told me...

...None of these thoughts, of course, will even be whispered if Secretary of State Christopher makes his scheduled November visit...

...Carter, too, for completing the diplomatic process Nixon had begun by establishing normal diplomatic relations (and cutting off all official U.S.-Taiwan links) in 1978...

...Nor is it ideology...

...It's not a character issue to the rulers in Peking— revered national hero Mao Tse-tung had sensual tastes that make Bill Clinton look like St...

...This was wrong...

...The last thing China needsis the world's disapproving attention if the territories' new rulers crack down on dissent and squelch the former British colony's domestic vitality...

...At a recent convivial luncheon in the coastal city of Xiamen, a Chinese army colonel, over toasts to a visiting American, confirmed this perception...

...could do is believe that, with the toning down of the anti-American rhetoric, it has solved the China problem...

...military analysts even doubt that China would be in a position to mount a successful actual invasion of Taiwan for several years...

...He is general secretary of the Communist Party, as well as chairman of the central military commission—that is, supremo of the armed forces...

...There is a clear sense that China's leadership is groping for solutions—and somewhat at a loss on how to proceed...

...Among points that would be outside the law were "personal attacks" on China's leaders...

...Any display of crude political intimidation at the outset of the new rule would make China almost as unpopular as it was after 1989's Tiananmen massacre...

...In mid-October, Chinese cities were told not to permit any further demonstrations in support of the nation's Diaoyu claims...

...Often, there has been little apparent warning of the new approach...

...Francis of Assisi...

...They thought we were going to use the missiles to make war on Taiwan and force reunification," Tang said, as though this was the most unheard-of option in the world...

...Qian had been misquoted, said foreign ministry spokesman Shen Guofang...

...Officials feared an "uncontrollable accident" in circumstances of emotional expression —a euphemism for the possibility that demonstrations might turn into anti-government protests at the weaknesses of China's foreign policy itself...

...The trip was intended to lay the groundwork for a proposed presidential visit some time in 1997...

...Taiwan is also proving itself a more complicated problem than China previously anticipated...

...We wanted [the"separatists"] to stop their actions...

...About America there is a graver sort of conspiracy paranoia: the U.S., it is thought, has deliberately plotted to prevent China's emergence as a great power...

...Well, at least not now, on the eve of a major Asian diplomatic meeting and less than a year before the takeover of Hong Kong...

...The Chinese remembered Nixon fondly to the end, inviting him back several times as a private citizen after he left office...

...on the reunification issue "has changed significantly," as one official puts it...

...Then came Bush, a genuine friend to China who did all he could, both in the U.S...

...With an important meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC) scheduled for this November in Manila, Peking suddenly backtracked...

...and internationally, to alleviate Peking's embarrassment at having to slaughter its protesting students in Tiananmen Square in 1989...

...Whether with Clinton or Dole, a presidential trip to China is arguably more important now than at any time since Reagan's visit in 1984...

...American officials privately confirm that China's strategy for dealing with both Taiwan and the U.S...

...The huge success of a luridly anti-American book published last year, The China That Can Say No, revealed untapped wells of anti-foreign resentment throughout the country...

...We do not want to go to war over Taiwan...

...The New York Times Peking bureau chief was summoned in October to an interview with Tang Shubei, deputy director of the government's Taiwan Affairs Office, and told that "some American friends" had "made the wrong judgment" on China's Taiwan policy...

...The worst thing the U.S...

...China cannot afford a spat with Japan now...

...When the British pull down the Union Jack at Government House on Hong Kong Island at midnight on June 30, the world's eyes will be watching to see how China digests the vibrantly successful (and increasingly politically self-confident) capitalist city-state...

...One protester plunged to his death while with a small flotilla of anti-Japanese protest boats...

...Ah, well...

...A third is how to handle the continuing awkwardness of relations with Taiwan...

...66 December 1996 • The American Spectator Political dissidents like Liu Xiaobo, sentenced in October to three years in jail for accusing China's leaders of unconstitutional actions in the human rights arena, and former student leader Wang Dan, who got eleven years in November, still continue to spook China's Communist brass...

...This latter question has become urgent as the pressures of competitive capitalism have created serious social problems — crime, uncontrolled migrant labor— and led to growing demand for political reform...

...Jiang has tried to meet the domestic challenges by promoting what seems somewhat like Gorbachev's effort to revivify moribund Soviet Communist zeal through perestroika...

...And how on earth can China's ruling Communist Party justify its continuing monopoly on political power, when its legitimizing Marxist-Maoist philosophy is no longer believed by ordinary Chinese...

...But he has two huge domestic challenges...

...The temptation to the party to maintain its hold on power is nationalism...

...They're delighted that Taiwan, the U.S., and Japan got the message" about the importance of Taiwan to China...

...Instead of the "new thinking" of glasnost, however, Jiang's theme is "spiritual civilization"— a portentous notion supposed to convince people to behave decently amid the tempting new material opportunities, the widespread corruption, and the cynicism about Communist goals...