World

The Legacy of Tiananmen

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 3, 1999 / 12:56 AM EDT / CBS

China expert Nancy Bernkopf Tucker looks at Tiananmen Square and U.S.-China relations in this op-ed piece. Tucker is an American diplomatic historian who specializes in U.S.-China relations at Georgetown University. She has served in the Office of Chinese Affairs in the U.S. State Department and at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Her most recent work, China Confidential, an edited volume of oral history interviews on twentieth century Chinese-American relations, will be published in 2000.

The 1989 confrontation between protesters and Chinese authorities at Tiananmen vividly illustrated the impact that domestic politics can have on Sino-American relations. In the wake of the massacre, the broad consensus among Americans that good relations with Beijing served the national interest collapsed. Needless to say, today, ten years later, we are at an equally critical juncture and risk another prolonged period of turmoil between the U.S. and China. In fact, some Cassandras predict a new cold war that would, once again, array two nuclear powers against each other in a delicate balance of terror.

Chinese Soldiers March at Tiananmen Square
(AP photo)

The Beijing spring that led to the crackdown of June 4, 1989, of course, spoke overwhelmingly to internal problems: corruption, arbitrary government, lack of press freedom, economic disorder. Those demonstrating sought to change China, not to deliver a message to Mikhail Gorbachev, who was visiting Beijing at the time, or to arouse Americans to do or desist from any particular action. China's leaders struck out to preserve their power and protect their domestic priorities not to stop a foreign invasion (although they did accuse foreigners of subsidizing the protesters). But the line between internal and external is difficult to draw in an era of instant communication, and the televised brutality of China's leaders estranged Americans. At the same time, China turned inward, rejected political liberalization and recoiled from the disintegration of the communist bloc and the Soviet Union.


		CHINA : 10 Year A F T E R T I A N A N M E N > An Interactive Guide to Modern China and the Massacre in Tiananmen Square.

American disillusionment with China, paralleled by the loss of a strategic anti-Soviet imperative, led to a decade of friction. An assortment of interest groups in the United States found reasons to complain about China policy whether because of growing trade deficits, weapons proliferation, human rights abuses or intimidation of Taiwan. In many instances critics used China to further domestic agendas as when the "pro-life" community targeted the one-child policy in China to focus attention on abortion at home. Protests from Beijing that all this was interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state aroused no sympathy. In fact, Americans were beguiled, by the spread of McDonald's and the competition for a US education, into hoping that Chinese actually yearned to be just like them. But beneath the surface in China, a nationalistic anti-Americanism grew among a public tiring of criticism and willing to believe government charges that the U.S. wanted China to remain weak and divided.

Now in 1999 Americans and Chinese, burdened by the legacy of Tiananmen, are faced by similar pressures and risk occasioning another decade of suspicion and ill-will. Leaders on both sides have difficult domestic policy choices to make and an unsettled political environment in which to act. Genuine problems in the Sino-American relationship once again are being aggravated by partisanship.

Chinese leaders battling the effects of an Asian economic crisis, failing state enterprises, bank instability, rampant corruption and massive unemployment find it convenient to turn popular anger against an arrogant and imperious America. Fortuitously, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of Tiananmen, they got the unparalleled opportunity to channel outrage over the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade into patriotic street demonstrations against the U.S. embassy. Dreaded anti-government protests were effectively preempted by nationalism even as the Communist Party continued to crack down on pro-democracy activists. Indeed, Jiang Zemin initially concealed Bill Clinton's apologies and stimulated doubts that vaunted U.S. technology and intelligence could be so deeply flawed. But although these tactics may have inoculated Jiang and Zhu Rongji against hard-line domestic political rivals, who oppose concessions to the U.S. such as those necessary to join the WTO, this strategy intensified American exasperation with Chinese policies and behavior.

Chinese Embassy in Belgrade after NATO attack.
(AP)

Of course the United States is at least as guilty of manipulating China policy to serve domestic ends. Annual votes over granting normal trading relations to China have yet to block or even put sanctions upon trade. Still, Congress opposes surrendering its yearly chance to berate and embarrass the White House. The president was so fearful of a rebuff from Congress in April that he refused to conclude a WTO deal with Zhu Rongji despite the extraordinarily favorable terms China had conceded. This may prove to have been a costly mistake as Jiang and Zhu retreat from extensive market opening and parry accusations that they betrayed the nation by trying to shame a U.S. guilty of Belgrade into a compensatory threat.

Premier Zhu Rongji
(AP photo)

The same might be said of the Cox Committee report on Chinese espionage. It may have been drafted by Democrats as well as Republicans, but it got its start as part of the anti-Clinton impeachment drive in 1998 and evoked harsh condemnation of the administration upon release. The charges although startling - that China stole information on the neutron bomb, every nuclear warhead presently deployed by the U.S. military, and technology for tracking missiles and submarines - in reality remain unproved. Nevertheless, partisanship demands a worst case scenario, particularly as the new presidential campaign season begins.

The events at Tiananmen Square that soured U.S.-China relations for so many years ought to have taught both Chinese and Americans some lessons. Foremost among these should have been that the intimate interaction between domestic and foreign affairs is unavoidable and unpredictable. Politics do not stop at the water's edge and governments do not have the freedom to act brutishly even against their own citizens. At the same time, it remains vitally important not to let domestic imperatives overwhelm the foreign policy process. Conflicting national interests conjoined with disputes over proliferation, espionage, trade and values are dangerous enough without adding domestic irresponsibility. Along that road war is inevitable and, hot or cold, war would be disastrous. Both Americans and Chinese ought to have the sense and the courage to see this clearly and stop taking foolish risks to satisfy domestic appetites.