By
Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
The humiliations at the hands of foreign
powers narrative
According to Social Identity
Theory, a significant part of an individual's personal identity consists of his
or her social identity, and so depends on group membership. Group identity
tends to be defined by contrast to other groups. Membership in a group leads to
systematic comparison, differentiation, and derogation of other groups. In
conflicts between groups of people, disputants usually view people outside
their own group as less good, or in the case of the opposing group, as really
bad. The opposing group is seen as the "enemy," who is inferior to
one's own group in many ways. When people are engaged in a serious
conflict, they will normally project their own negative traits onto the other
side, ignoring their own shortcomings or misdeeds, while emphasizing the same
in the other.
Enemy images and
stereotypes are formed in response to the basic human psychological need for
identity, and as a result of group dynamics. Once a conflict becomes escalated
and polarized, enemy images are bound to be formed. This sort of inter-group
conflict occurs even in the absence of material bases for conflict. Enemy
images play an important role in perpetuating and intensifying conflict.
The zero-sum nature of face and China's history of
victimization at the hands of the West combine to make many contemporary
Chinese view diplomacy as a fierce competition between leaders who win or lose
face for the nations they embody.
Public apology
however means admitting a fault. Clinton’s full apologies and Bush’s (as
translated by the Chinese) full apologies-were skillfully “dressed up” by the
Chinese official media as diplomatic victories of Beijing. The American
apologies were also used by Beijing to put itself on the “moral high
ground”-“We are right” and “You owe us.”
The following now is
designed to examine how, the beliefs of history and memory influenced the
Party’s decision-making during the three incidents we promised to make sense
of.
In the eyes of many
Americans and international observers, issuing Taiwanese President Lee the visa
to deliver the graduation address at his alma mater was innocuous, the 1999
embassy bombing was merely a technical mi stake and the U.S. government offered
official apologies fully and quickly, and the 2001 plan collision happened
outside Chinese territorial waters, therefore, they would not think that any of
these incidents were intentional or any kind of bullying or aggression to China
or the Chinese people.
However, as we have
seen, the majority of Chinese people, including the majority members of the CCP
Politburo, believed that the embassy bombing was a deliberate action, an
American conspiracy; even though the EP-3 was outside Chinese territorial
waters, it was conducting spying against China, and the collision caused the
damage of Chinese jet and the death of Chinese pilot; therefore, they saw both
incidents as American aggression, many of them even viewed them as China’s new
humiliation, another in a long line of humiliations that China has suffered
since the Opium War. Why did people of the two parties have such huge
differences in perceptions and interpretations regarding the same conflict
situation?
The concepts of
security dilemma and enemy images provide alternative explanations for the
Chinese people’s perception of the United States. However, both concepts cannot
fully explain why the rise of anti-Americanism, especially the rising vigilance
and suspicions to the United States, happened at a time when China’s contacts
and exchanges with the U.S. have been greatly increasing. The rapid changes in
the context of US-China relationship and the development of globalization have
made the two countries more closely connected with other.
Like culture, history
and memory are rarely by themselves the direct causes of conflict, but they
provide the “lens” by which we view and bring into focus our world; through the
lens differences are refracted. The lens of historical memory helps both masses
and elites interpret the present and decide on policy. (See Kevin Avruch, Culture and Conflict Resolution, Washington D.C.,
1998).
Through this lens of
historical memory, an isolated and/or accidental event (as viewed by the
Americans) was perceived by Chinese leaders as a new humiliation. The disputes
in question, thus easily touched on sensitive Chinese feelings about Western
imperialist nations taking advantage of a weakened China in the 19th
and early 20th centuries.
History and memory
also provide individuals a reservoir of shared symbols that may be enlisted to
constitute contesting social groups. (See Allen Tidwell, Conflict
resolved? A Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution, 1998).
Following the 1840
Opium War, China was on the verge of subjugation and loss of its
thousands-year-long national identity. The Eight-Power Allied Forces occupied
Beijing in 1900. Japan annexed Taiwan and Manchuria and occupied more than 900
cities from China. Hong Kong, Macao, and numerous small areas became concession
zones to foreign powers. The invasion by Western powers and Japan reduced China
to the status of semi-colonial society. The Chinese nation was facing a grave
threat to national survival.
As represented by
China’s national anthem, a very strong sense of crisis, or sense of insecurity,
has always been an important theme of the national political discourse in
China. Thus, the narrative of national salvation depends upon national
humiliation; the narrative of national security depends upon national
insecurity. There is a popular political slogan in China, “Never let the
historical tragedies be repeated.” The government therefore asks people to
always keep a wary eye on international “anti-China forces.” “Heighten our
vigilance and defend our motherland” is another political slogan that was
particular popular in China during the 1970s. Such kind of remarks on vigilance
as we have seen have now become a sign of being “patriotic” and “sober-minded”
for the speakers, and especially also during the three incidents we have
commented on.
The one hundred year
national humiliation has provided the current Chinese leaders a lot of
historical analogies to use and they often draw a parallel between a current
event and a historical event, as the previous sections have shown. A deep
historical sense of victimization by outside powers, a long-held suspicions
about foreign conspiracies against China, and the powerful governmental
education and propaganda campaigns on historical humiliation, all these have
worked together to construct a special Chinese “culture of insecurity.” Under
this mindset, international confrontations are easily perceived and experienced
by the Chinese as assaults on fundamental identity, dignity (face), authority
and power. They are also oversensitive to grievances of old (this nation’s
“chosen trauma”), which renders the country over prone to tantrums at the
slightest international offense, real or imagined.
Peter Hays Gries’
research on the embassy bombing supports the above analysis. As he wrote: “the
tales of the ‘Century of Humiliation’ which began with the First Opium War and
the renting out of Hong Kong to the British in 1842, powerfully shaped the way
that Chinese both interpreted and reacted to the Belgrade bombing.” The
“sense of victimization” and “suspicion syndrome” deeply affected Chinese
people’s attitudes, interpretation and judgment regarding the conflict
situations. (Gries, “Tears of rage: Chinese nationalist reactions to the
Belgrade embassy bombing,” China Journal, No. 46, July 2001, p. 26.)
But why did neither
Chinese leaders nor the Chinese people seem to believe that the bombing of the
Embassy was a technical mistake? Why are there widely-believed conspiracy
theories in China regarding U.S. intentions? As we have discussed in the
previous sections, history and memory constitute a powerful force over Chinese
people’s thought, feelings and action. As a result of the Patriotic Education
Campaign, many Chinese have begun to confront rather than avoid their past
humiliation.
The new focus on
Chinese misery during the “one hundred years of national humiliation” has given
rise to an outpouring of victim consciousness among the Chinese public. All the
three incidents fed into a renowned “Chinese sense 01 victimization,” of having
been the world’s greatest nation only to be humiliated in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. The accidental or mischievous behavior on
the part of the U.S. caused sufferings (e.g., the injuries and deaths), and
therefore touched on sensitive Chinese feelings about Western imperialist
nations taking advantage of a weakened China in the 19th and early
20th centuries.
Just as Chinese
leader Deng Xiaoping drew a parallel between the western economic sanctions in
1990 with eight powers’ invasion to China in 1900, so, according to Zhu Wengli’s research, when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia,
“the historical precedent the Chinese referred to was not the ethnic cleansing
against the Jews by Hitler as in the West, but the allied military intervention
during the Boxer Rebellion.” (Wenli, How Chinese see
America, paper presented at “China-U. S. Substantial China
Dialogue,” November 1, 2000.)
Clearly, historical
analogies function as important information processors. They help resolve
conflicting incoming information in ways consistent with the expectations of
the analogy.
Just as the Cuban
missile crisis was a “cultural production”, in which the official U.S. state
narrative marginalized alternative understandings of these events, so the three
US-China incidents were also “eultural produetions”. The Chinese official state narrative of past
humiliation, the “sense of victimization”, and “suspicion syndrome” both
constituted three incidents as crises and marginalized alternative
understandings.
In fact the central
myth of the ruling party today is that its historical “sacrifices and
contribution” have “put an end to the history of humiliating diplomacy in modem
China.” The legitimacy of current China’s rulers is thus highly dependent upon
successful performances on the international stage. The CCP leadership is
responsible for maintaining China’s “national face” in its dealings with other
nations. Therefore, whenever an international incident might be perceived
as a new humiliation, it immediately became a test for the ruling party. To
Beijing, each of the three incidents was much more than a simple violation of
Chinese sovereignty: it was seen as a test for the Party-not a test-of-will for
power competition, but a test of the ruling party’s legitimacy and “political
credibility.” The Chinese government needed to be able to show the people, the
public, that it would not allow humiliation again. Being tough and aggressive
thus became the natural choice of the Party. Otherwise, they would not pass the
“test.”
For all the three
crises, there existed other options for response, there were also some
international practices for handing these kinds of incidents. For example, a
“normal” response for handing the EP-3 plane collision accident could be that
the 24 crew members of the EP-3 would be allowed to return home in the first
several days, China might hold the plane and then the two countries start to
negotiate about compensation and settlement. For the embassy bombing, if the
same kind of incident happened between the U.S. and another country, it would
certainly arouse a very strong response in many countries of the world, even an
ally. Emotional demonstrations were almost certainly expected to happen.
However, for most countries, the demonstrations would be spontaneous, the
governments would not organize them and should also try their best to prevent
the protesters for destroying U.S. property or besieging the U.S. ambassador
and staff. Although the anti-American demonstrations in response to the bombing
were overwhelmingly voluntary, they were still indirectly endorsed by the
government: in a single-party regime, only the government would be able to
provide transportation, to loosen security procedures allowing the masses to
apply for demonstration permits, and to tacitly tolerate physical damage to the
US Embassy in Beijing.
Similarly, if the
decision that the Clinton administration made to issue Taiwanese president the
visa to visit the U.S. reversed a 16-year-old U.S. practice, diplomatic
protests, including even actions such as recalling ambassador could be choice
of options, but the responses should be kept in the diplomatic sphere. But
China’s responses in 1995 and 1996 were three rounds of large-scale
live-ammunition military exercises with ballistic missiles flying over Taiwan.
Table 6.2 is a summary of China’s conflict behavior during the three crises
contrasting with the hypothetical more “normal” diplomatic practice.
The historical memory
variable helps explain why Chinese leaders did not choose to resolve the three
incidents through cool diplomacy. When the incidents were perceived as
bullying, and when the central myth and the legitimacy of the government are
highly dependent upon maintaining China’s “national face,” it became natural
and understandable that the government needed to be “tough.” “Cool diplomacy”
would not pass the domestic test and therefore was eliminated as an option.
In case of the
embassy bombing the instrumental stakes were too high, and the assault on
Chinese self-esteem was too acute. Popular nationalists had taken to the
streets in protest, and Chinese diplomats were forced to take a public posture
of rejecting American apologies and explanations. Like a father refusing his
son’s repeated prostrations of forgiveness, rejecting America’s repeated
apologies was one of the few ways China’s leadership could seek to restore
Chinese self-esteem in the eyes of the Chinese people.
Through the lens of
historical memory, isolated and/or accidental events were magnified and
rendered emotional. Diplomacy between the two states therefore quickly became
games. Both Clinton’s full apologies and Bush’s two regrets—translated by the
Chinese as full apologies-were skillfully “dressed up” by the Chinese official
media as diplomatic victories. In the EP-3 ease, at the juncture when Beijing
could not get what they wanted (the full apology from the U.S.) and might lose
the competition, linguistic differences between the two countries were
creatively used to create a solution.
The three US-China
crises should also be understood in the context of the rising nationalism in
China after the June Fourth tragedy and the end of the Cold War. In the
previous part we discussed how the state-led “Campaign of Patriotic Education”
has promoted the “national humiliation education” and greatly contributed to
the rise of nationalism in China. The rise of nationalism did help Beijing to
regain its ethical and moral legitimacy.
The communist party
dressed itself up as a nationalist party ever since the end of the Cold War and
the collapse of “international” communism. The three incidents cut “perfectly”
into the emerging “victimization narrative’ in China and thus provided the fuses
to touch off Chinese popular nationalism. However, the rise of nationalism is
also a double-edge sword. During all the three crises, the government not only
negotiated with the U.S. government, but had to “negotiate” with its domestic
audiences too. The rise of nationalism put pressure on the government’s
policy-making. The government needed to be tough to maintain its legitimacy.
Through the lens of history and memory, the three events were perceived and
experienced by the Chinese as assaults on fundamental identity, dignity (face),
authority and power. The beliefs of history and memory thus justified the
escalation of the conflict and the course of its development. Being tough and
aggressive thus had ethical and moral correctness. This helps to explain why
many of Chinese government’s actions in external affairs are regarded as
“harsh” by foreigners but perceived as “soft” by much of its domestic audience.
And finally, the
three crises share a striking similarity. Escalation from an international
incident or accident to a serious crisis was in each case caused by China’s
unexpectedly strong reaction to accidental or mischievous behavior on the part
of the U.S. In other words, it appeared as if China intended to escalate the
crisis. Oddly, however, at the same time during the course of each crisis,
China also desired to develop a better bilateral relationship. The collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe, especially the overthrow of the Romanian regime,
has had a particularly chilling effect on Chinese leaders. The subsequent
sanctions and pressures from the West have further added to Beijing’s anxiety
and nervousness. In general, China’s leadership in the 1990’s has tried hard to
avoid direct conflict with the West, particularly the United States-in contrast
to Mao’s approach. China’s leaders in many cases have adopted moderate stances
on many occasions, and at times even submitted to what they considered insulting
demands. For example, China allowed the United States to search publicly its Yinhe vessel for chemical weapons in 1993, even though
there were no such weapons on board. China also began to cooperate with the US
in the field of arms control, agreeing to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT) in 1991, acceding to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)
in 1992, and agreeing to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.
China has steadfastly attended multilateral negotiations on arms control and
disarmament, and has signed or ratified almost all the multilateral arms
control treaties, making a positive contribution to the progress of
international arms control and disarmament. China signed the WTO entry
agreements with U.s. even though many of its domestic
critics drew parallel between the WTO treaties with those ‘unequal treaties”
that the Qing Dynasty signed with the western powers one hundred years ago. Why
did China cooperate with the U.S. in the same period of time on some issues but
turn aggressive on these other issues?
To answer this
question, it is necessary to compare the three non-conflict US-China events
(WTO Negotiations, Arms Control Negotiations and the Yinhe
Incident) with the three conflict cases (1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Embassy
Bombing Crisis and the EP-3 Crisis). To put the first three cases into the
category of “non-conflict” does not mean there were no disputes or
confrontations in the three cases. The US-China WTO Negotiations, for example,
took thirteen years and experienced many setbacks and serious disputes during
the processes. However, China’s main approach of handling the three events was
cooperative, trying hard to avoid the escalation of conflict. There was also
some cooperation between the two states during the three conflict incidents.
For example, as we discussed earlier, at the last stage of the EP-3 crisis, the
two governments, somehow were cooperating tacitly with each other to. But yet
in all the three cases, China intentionally escalated the crisis.
One similarity
uniting all the six cases was they concerned sovereignty issues. The WTO
negotiations and the arms control negotiation were about China’s two vital
interests: trade and security. The six cases have three major differences:
(1) Emergency
The WTO negotiations
and the arms control negotiation both involved long processes. But the other
four cases happened suddenly as emergencies. Five 2000-pound Joint Direct
Attack M4J1itions (JDAMs) attacked the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on May 7,
1999; On April I, 2001, a V.S. EP-3 Aries 11 airplane collided with a Chinese
F-8 fighter jets and made an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island at Lingshui; The Clinton administration unexpectedly made a
decision to issue Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui the visa to visit the United
States; On July 23, 1993, the CIA alleged that a Chinese container ship, the Yinhe, was carrying chemical weapons material to Iran and
three U.S. military ships began to chase Yinhe in the
public sea. Meanwhile U.S. pressure persuaded Gulf countries not to permit the
ship to dock, unload cargo, or take on fresh food and water for twenty days.
(2) Public awareness
The Chinese Communist
Party maintains a tight control of all the media in China. Public awareness of
a particular international incident therefore is dependent on whether the Party
allows the media to report this event or not. However, for some international
crises or emergencies that happened in China, especially the events with
casualties and injuries, it is difficult for the Party to hide them, even
though the Party can still control the flow of information and filter the news.
For example, the embassy bombing happened at midnight on May. 8, but the
Chinese official media did not report it until noon of the next day. The media
did not report Bill Clinton's first apology on May 8 because the government
needed to flame the public' s hatred at the early stage of the crisis. During
the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Beijing actually carried out a media blitz
against the U.S. and the Taiwanese leader. The EP-3 Incident was called
"Spy Plane Incident" in Chinese media. The official media gave
detailed reports about the accident and why it was the EP 3's fault, as well as
and the humanitarian treat that China provided to the V.S. crew members.
For the 13-year WTO
negotiations and the 6-year arms control negotiations, the Chinese people were
aware of the ongoing negotiations between the two countries. However, they did
not know about any detail about theses negotiations.
For example, even today, ordinary people do not have access to the WTO treaties
the two countries signed, even though some of them have changed their courses
of life. For most Chinese people, the Yinhe Incident
is an unheard name. There were almost no official reports about this event.
Why?
First, this incident
did not happen inside China, so the government could hide it from public
awareness; second, for the first one or two weeks, the government itself was
not quite sure whether there were chemical weapons material in this container
ship or not; third, if the media were allowed to report it, the public might
think it was a humiliation to China for allowing the U.S. to conduct an open
inspection of this Chinese ship.
(3) Negotiation mode
All the six cases
involved negotiations and finally were settled that way. But there were
differences in the negotiation modes that distinguish the three non-conflict
cases from the three cases of escalation. The negotiations of "the first
type were conducted mainly among the professional experts of the two countries.
For example, the Chinese team participating in the arms control negotiations
was composed of nuclear experts, officials from the Arms Control Bureau of the
Foreign Affairs Ministry and scholars on arms control issues from government
think tanks. The Yinhe Incident was negotiated solely
by the officials of the Arms Control Bureau of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The negotiations of the other type, however, were meanly political and very
public. Not only were the diplomats of the two involved, but also the military,
the U.S. congress and even the media were indirectly involved in the talks. The
top leaders of the two countries made open statements and exchanged letters
during the processes.
The three U.S. China
crises were actually China's only "hot" conflicts with foreign
countries after the end of the Cold War. However, during this period of time,
China had territorial disputes with some ASEAN countries. In the late 1990s, as
a new strategy of strengthening their territorial claims, Philippines and
Vietnam took the lead to intensify the situation by seizing and attacking
Chinese fishermen and fishing boats in the South China Sea. However, the
Chinese government demonstrated a very restrained response to these
provocations. In 1998 too, Chinese government expressed only verbal concern but
did not take any actions during the massive anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia. It
seems that China treated different countries differently when dealing with conflicts.
Comparing the above
mentioned three non-U.S. cases with the three US-China Crises, the six cases
share three important similarities:
(5) Each of them
involved Chinese casualties and injuries. Compared with the three US-China
crises, the Chinese casualties and injuries were even much bigger in the three
non-U.S. cases. For example, Indonesia's ethnic Chinese were the main target of
the bloody Jakarta riot in May 1998. According to Indonesian government
sources, over 1,000 Chinese people died during these riots, many women were
raped, 2,479 shop-houses, 1,026 ordinary houses, 1,604 shops, 383 private
offices, 65 bank offices were destroyed. (http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian _1998_ Revolution)
(6) All of them were
emergencies. The leaders had to make decision quickly.
(7) Each of them was related
to sovereignty issues. The South China Sea disputes were about territory. Even
though the Indonesian ethnic Chinese are no longer citizens of People's
Republic of China (China does not accept dual citizenship), however, supporting
and protecting citizens who live abroad should be the responsibility of any
state.
For the public, the
Chinese official media did report about the South China Sea disputes and the
Indonesia riots, but without providing any details. During the Indonesia riots,
many photos of the riots were spread on the Internet. Some Chinese people, mainly
students and intellectuals who had access to Internet, strongly criticized the
government for being cold and detached toward overseas Chinese.
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