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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
The Chinese get what sounds like an apology, and President Bush gets a resolution that silences the right -- for now.
Apr 12, 2001 | In the end, the resolution of the spy plane standoff hinged on semantics -- the use of language that would politically appease both Americans and Chinese, and keep from bruising either a sensitive superpower with a new president, or a rising Asian nation long attuned to slights to its pride and dignity.
U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher sent a letter Tuesday night to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan expressing "sincere regret" over the loss of a Chinese pilot and stating that the U.S. is "very sorry" for entering Chinese airspace and making an emergency landing on Hainan Island "without verbal clearance." The missive also asked Beijing to "please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss." Beijing leaders responded positively to the letter, which provided it with a way out of an increasingly messy diplomatic crisis with the country that holds the linchpin to China's plans for economic growth.
Though the letter stopped short of a full apology, which the U.S. did not want to give, it did indicate that the U.S. was "very sorry" for the death of Wang and the emergency landing, using the term baoqian. That's more casual than "zhengshi daoqian," the equivalent of a formal apology, which Chinese President Jiang Zemin had sought, but baoqian implies enough U.S. responsibility for the incident to satisfy hardliners, linguistic experts say.
"The key phrase in English, 'very sorry for entering China's airspace,' leaves just barely ambiguous the question of fault, but the Chinese baoqian is not similarly ambiguous," says Princeton Professor of Chinese Perry Link, who edited "The Tiananmen Papers" earlier this year. "Both governments can run with their respective spins, but in language the Chinese side has done somewhat better."
According to prominent Chinese literary translator Zhu Hong, who is also a professor of Chinese Literature at Boston University, although baoqian is not the most formal for of apology in the Chinese language, it is the second most serious form of expressing regret or articulating feeling apologetic. Zhu says that in the context of the diplomatic crisis with China, use of baoqian in the ambassador's letter would imply enough U.S. responsibility to be an acceptable form of apology, and allow Chinese leaders to sway public opinion and hardliners.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Ci said: "Since the U.S. government has already said 'very sorry' to the Chinese people, the Chinese government has, out of humanitarian considerations, decided to allow the 24 people from the U.S. spy plane to leave after completion of the necessary procedures." But Chen also added that "this is not the conclusion of the case."
Though the matter of recovering the spy plane remains unresolved, the letter effectively ended the diplomatic impasse between the two countries, and within hours, a chartered Continental Airlines 737 was en route from Guam to pick up the detainees.
The resolution came none too soon for President Bush, who was facing an uprising on his right over his comparative caution in dealing with the stalemate. The chorus of conservative critics gained in volume over the last several days, with Rep. Henry Hyde, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and a growing number of rightist pundits charging that Bush was too soft in what Hyde and others alleged was a "hostage" situation -- a term the Bush administration pointedly refused to use. Hard-liners began calling for sanctions against China, including yanking the U.S. ambassador, cutting trade ties and blocking China's entry into the World Trade Organization or its bid to host the Olympics.
But on Wednesday key Republicans praised the resolution of the crisis. "Everybody knows we were very limited in our options," says Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a member of both the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and its Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. "I think it [the letter] is fine. Obviously, we've got some diplomatic doubletalk in there, but that's to be expected in this business. Overall, it's probably as good as we could have gotten here, at least in regards to the short term.
"The Chinese were holding a lot of the cards -- the cards being 24 of our crew members," Hagel continued. "In the end, were we going to exacerbate an already delicate problem here by hardening lines on both sides? Driving both sides further and further apart? With an endgame that would be more and more unattractive?
"Let's be honest here, the Chinese had us over a barrel on this thing. I was just talking to a constituent, and he said that we should have been tougher, and I asked him, 'Where do you want to start? With tactical nuclear missiles? Bombarding Hainan island with the Seventh Fleet?'"
