China Shepherds US Ties After Bomb
By The Associated Press
BEIJING (AP) -- China and the United States are wrangling anew over Taiwan, trade and a host of human rights complaints. A year after U.S. bombs shattered China's embassy in Yugoslavia, bitterly strained relations have retained the edginess that has marked ties for more than a decade.
Still, the bombing has shifted Chinese views of the United States. Gone are the communist leadership's rosy prospects for a partnership with Washington. Supporters of closer U.S. ties are on the defensive, and groups long wary of American intentions have grown more leery -- and vocal.
``I never had good feelings about the United States, so the bombing incident just confirmed my suspicions,'' said Bao Limin, a 22-year-old master's candidate at Tsinghua University, one of China's elite schools.
Bao and her classmates have no plans to protest on the anniversary of the May 7, 1999, bombing -- which falls on Sunday Belgrade time and Monday in Beijing. Academics said universities were ordered to keep campuses quiet. Chinese leaders don't want trouble in the weeks before the U.S. Congress votes on China's permanent access to the American market.
Even as they have moved to shore up U.S. ties to keep needed foreign investment flowing, Chinese leaders have had to accommodate anti-American sentiment among communist conservatives, the military and the public.
``The Chinese people will carry this incident in their hearts for a long time, so this has naturally influenced China-U.S. relations,'' said Liu Jinghua, an international affairs scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. ``Of course it brought nationalism into play.''
The tensions are evident in the tightly controlled state media. Newspapers herald China's expected entry to the World Trade Organization, and acknowledge U.S. help in that goal. Shrill TV documentaries catalogue American racism and police brutality -- a counter to U.S. human rights criticisms. Leaders loudly accuse Washington of impeding China's cherished unification with Taiwan.
President Jiang Zemin has spoken out against creeping Westernization, accusing foreign forces of trying to change China's socialist government. To vie with the West, he launched a campaign to spur technological development, citing China's homemade nuclear weapons program for inspiration.
China was stridently opposed to NATO's war with Yugoslavia over Kosovo when five satellite-guided bombs slammed into the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The attack killed three Chinese journalists in the embassy and ignited furious protests in 20 cities across China.
Protesters, inflamed by state media, saw the bombing as a deliberate attack on China's sovereignty. They set the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu alight and hurled stones, garbage and even feces at the embassy in Beijing, trapping the U.S. ambassador inside for more than four days.
``In one instance, the United States' so-called democracy and freedom had no market among ordinary Chinese,'' Wei Ming, pen name for an unidentified scholar, said in an essay posted on a Web site that favors conservative, nationalistic views.
Many Chinese still feel anger toward the U.S. government over the bombing, refusing to accept Washington's explanation that the attack was an accident, due to faulty targeting.
``It's just like our parents always told us: the U.S. rules by force,'' said Wang Xiaoxia, a Tsinghua student.
China is much better off and better informed about the United States than during the democracy demonstrations in 1989, when students erected a Statue of Liberty-like figure on Tiananmen Square.
Television has made American celebrities familiar to Chinese, and trade has brought them U.S. goods. Many Chinese have visited the United States. One recent book, selling well at highbrow Beijing book stores, tells of a Chinese lawyer who clerked for a U.S. federal court judge and renders a sensitive portrait of the American legal system.
The free-flowing exchange has inspired mixed feelings.
``Most ordinary Chinese hate the United States for the bombing,'' said Zheng Zhenqi, a truck driver in Beijing. But Zheng praises U.S. democracy, pointing to President Clinton's impeachment trial over his relationship with a White House intern -- something he says could never happen in China.
Bao and her classmates like American movies and music. They carry pagers, have access to computers and know how to access foreign Web sites government censors have blocked, although they admit their access to information is limited.
For them, the bombing was just another in a series of acts they maintain the West has used to keep China down: from Britain's Opium War to China's losing bid to play host to the 2000 Olympics to constant U.S. hectoring over human rights, Tibet and Taiwan.
``I always felt these things were none of your business,'' said Chen Hong, one of Bao's classmates.
``The United States always wants to be No. 1 and its not about to let another country rise to that level so there's bound to be conflict,'' Chen said.