America needs to update its view of China

Like most people of his generation, my dad was a helpless participant in China's insane and ridiculous Communist experiment. The story started when he was in fifth or sixth grade. Mao Zedong decided that China needed to catch up industrially with the West in just five years. This "Great Leap Forward" resulted in one of the worst famines in world history and the deaths of nearly 30 million people. When there was a backlash against Mao's policies, he started the Cultural Revolution to silence his critics. Intellectuals were forced to be janitors while illiterate peasants taught "Maoist" theology in universities. That was the real Red China.

Since then, China has transformed itself into a more pragmatic country and is now seeking to sustain the economic and social developments of the last 20 years. However, I am afraid many Americans have failed to notice this transformation. When any potential U.S.-China conflict arises, phrases like "Red China" and "Communist menace" are part of the hardline ideological rhetoric in the U.S. These words are not only reminders of the bygone Cold War days; they also paint an inaccurate picture of China.

When I was there two years ago, most people on the street were busy trying to make money. The Chinese government is a party dictatorship whose justification for power is economic growth. Since the ruling party is not an ideological monolith anymore, the different groups within it do compete for the people's support and their actions do to a certain degree reflect public opinion.

The leadership of China right now is moderate and pro-reform. Most of the people responsible for the Tiananmen Massacre are either retired or dead of old age, with the exception of Li Peng. Although officially Li is second in command, politically he is impotent because of the corruption that surrounds him. The recent confrontation over an American airplane is evidence of China's moderation. Judging from the 1999 Belgrade embassy bombing, the Chinese could have taken an extreme position. After seeing his fellow pilot crash, the surviving fighter jet asked for permission to shoot down the American plane; his request was denied. If China were really Red China, the American crew would have died right there. Considering that most Chinese people regard this event as a case of U.S. espionage and manslaughter, detaining the crew for a certain period was the least the government could do to appease their wrath.

Bush's initial demand that China release the crew members right away and his declaration that the plane was U.S. sovereign territory only made hardliners in China more angry and more eager to prolong the standoff. When Bush softened his stance and submitted a letter of regret, the incident was quickly resolved. From this saga, we should see that although China may never be a great friend of the United States, hardliners living in the Cold War past should not turn a country with one-fifth of humanity into the next Soviet Union. 

Sichao Xu is a sophomore in Berkeley.

Back to Opinion...