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Getting to yes: Why Milosevic is balking at peace
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[06/05/99]

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Now the Chinese were once again waving banners and chanting anti-U.S. slogans, including "Blood debts must be paid with blood." The official Chinese press accused the United States of "harbor[ing] deep prejudice and hostility toward China" and of intentionally carrying out a "criminal act" because the Chinese people had "made achievements that enemy forces in the West could no longer tolerate."

Students of Chinese history know that the country's humiliating experience of victimization by foreign powers in the past translated directly into support for Lenin's theories about imperialism. For me, being there at the end of the Cultural Revolution was also an important reminder of just how much of China's modern identity had been forged in opposition to the West.

Official propaganda at the time was still so alienated from America that it was hard to imagine how the Chinese Communist Party would ever feel comfortable cooperating with foreign imperialists like me, let alone becoming fully integrated into the global market system. After all, historically speaking, America and the West were exploiters and oppressors who had "cut up China like a melon," humiliated the Chinese race and soiled China's once proud national escutcheon.

Twenty years of reform have changed many things in China, but the collective memory of "national humiliation" is one of the most resistant parts of China's historical legacy. It will not be overcome simply by increasing trade, by allowing students to study abroad or by more American fast-food restaurants opening in Beijing.

Like an afterglow that lingers on the screen long after a television set has been turned off, images from its history keep haunting China. Each time another country does something the party finds provocative -- especially in relation to Taiwan, Tibet or sovereignty and human rights issues -- party leaders proclaim the offending nation as having "wounded the feelings of the Chinese people." To a Westerner, such an accusation sounds absurdly childish. But actually it is a carefully chosen figure of speech that resonates among Chinese precisely because it emotionally summons up China's experience of being historically "wounded."

In a similar vein, what the recent demonstrations and expressions of indignation (and denial) about the Cox Report allegations suggest is that China has still not transcended its old antagonistic attitudes about foreign powers unfairly preying on it. In witnessing this latest new spasm of anti-imperialist, or anti-American, sentiment, one is still left to wonder: Why does China feel so wounded? With such ambiguous feelings toward countries with which it is now ever more deeply involved economically, what is its future in the world?

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