| With standoff over, Asians ponder repercussions U.S., China praised, panned, but fallout now region's major concern 04/13/2001 By Gregg Jones / The Dallas Morning News
BANGKOK, Thailand – For 11 days, Asia watched anxiously as the United States and China exchanged angry accusations and demands over the detained crew of a U.S. spy plane and a missing Chinese pilot.
So when the stalemate finally ended with a U.S. statement of regret and the release of the 24 American crew members from Chinese custody, the continent heaved a collective sigh of relief Thursday.
Who won? Who lost? Those questions are being debated across Asia by government officials, commentators and scholars.
"I think it's kind of a mixed feeling," said Michael DeGolyer, associate professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. "On the one hand, there are countries that feel rather happy to see Uncle Sam taken down a notch. On the other hand, there is concern about the repercussions of this."
The confrontation was triggered by the April 1 collision of a U.S. EP-3E spy plane and a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea. The damaged U.S. aircraft made an emergency landing on southern China's Hainan island while the Chinese jet plunged into the sea. The Chinese pilot is missing and presumed dead.
U.S. in unfavorable light
For the most part, official opinions around Asia remained publicly neutral during the standoff. Even staunch U.S. security allies such as South Korea and Japan went no further than expressing support for a quick and amicable resolution.
But in Asian news coverage and commentary, the United States has been cast in a far less favorable light than China.
"I think China has emerged as the party that was wronged in this incident," said Dr. Goh Beng Len, a professor of anthropology at the National University of Singapore. "So it does emerge in a better light, in my opinion."
The initial Bush administration demands focusing on the return of the American spy plane and its crew have only reinforced Asia's perceptions of the United States as an arrogant and insensitive power, Dr. Goh said.
Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News sounded the same theme Thursday, blaming the confrontation on Mr. Bush's "arrogance."
But Dr. Michael Montesano, an American who teaches Southeast Asian social history at the National University of Singapore, contends that "clearly there are very different private opinions from what we're hearing in public. Southeast Asians are more on our side than they're letting on."
'A step forward'
Whatever the private feelings, China is winning public applause from its neighbors for accepting something less than the full U.S. apology that Beijing had demanded.
"Chinese leaders have basically made a step forward toward an early repair of China-U.S. relations and have resisted the calls of hard-liners in their nation such as the People's Liberation Army," said an analysis in Japan's Daily Yomiuri.
Singapore's Straits Times called the outcome "a win-win situation for both China and the U.S.," but heaped praise on China for "defusing a major crisis by not demanding a full apology from the United States."
For many Asians, more important than who won or lost are the future implications for the crucial U.S.-Chinese relationship and regional stability, analysts said.
"Here in Hong Kong, the main response is one of relief because our Number 1 and Number 2 export-import partners are China and the U.S.," Dr. DeGolyer said. "Hong Kong had absolutely nothing to gain and everything possible to lose both economically and politically in this confrontation."
The danger now is the potential for "a further hardening of attitudes in Washington toward China," warned an editorial in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's leading English-language daily. "This would inevitably lead to a similar response from Beijing. The ripples from a further deterioration in U.S.-China relations would be felt throughout the region."
But whatever sympathy China might have won in this part of the world during its standoff with the United States is tempered by the uneasiness that many Asian countries feel about China's emergence as a regional economic and military power.
One concern in Southeast Asia is whether China's success in rebuffing initial U.S. demands in the spy plane confrontation will encourage Beijing to take a tougher stance in pressing its South China Sea territorial claims.
China, for example, claims all of the Spratly Islands, while five Southeast Asian nations claim part or all of the islands.
"I do not think that these other powers are going to be in any way supportive of China being more assertive in the region," said Dr. DeGolyer. "If anything, people might feel that China has made its point and perhaps become a bit too assertive in the South China Sea.
"So, while in one sense this has enhanced Chinese prestige, it has also enhanced the notion of China as a threat to peace."
Another concern voiced Thursday is whether the United States will cede ground to China in the competition for diplomatic and military influence in Asia. China is demanding that the United States cease its surveillance flights off China's coast; the United States says it is within its legal rights to continue the operations.
"I think it is absolutely important that those flights resume immediately," said Dr. Montesano. "The U.S. flights are the first line of defense for the Spratlys."
The challenge for the United States is how to continue what it says are valuable intelligence-gathering operations without causing another confrontation with an increasingly aggressive Chinese military, analysts said.
"Any country that has a dispute with China would feel quite uncomfortable with the idea that the United States would be withdrawing, at least its monitoring and oversight, from the region," said Dr. DeGolyer. "At the same time, they certainly don't want the United States to be provocative of China, and vice versa."
Nowhere outside the Chinese mainland has the spy plane drama been followed more closely – or with greater concern – than in Taiwan, the Southeast Asian island that China claims as a breakaway province, analysts and Taiwanese diplomats say.
The sale of U.S. arms to Taiwan is perhaps the most contentious issue in U.S.-Chinese relations. The sudden end of the spy plane stalemate has left many Taiwanese nervously wondering whether the Bush administration has agreed to China's demand that it reject Taiwan's request for sophisticated U.S. Aegis-class destroyers, a Taiwanese diplomat said.
"We're so much afraid that something has already been done under the table to get the release of the crew," said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Our interests could be sacrificed."
Concessions to China at this point would encourage even more aggressive Chinese behavior in the region, China experts and the Taiwanese diplomat said.
"You can't be overcome by euphoria when your 24 heroes and heroines come home," the diplomat said. "You shouldn't think this is over. The Chinese ego will be a lot bigger after this. I think this is the beginning of a big test of U.S. policy toward Asia."
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