Bush's Big Test: Saving Face

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Bush was at Camp David that Saturday night with a group that included National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice when he got word of the incident. Twenty-four American servicemen and -women were being held at the Lingshui air base on Hainan.

"How serious is it?" he asked Rice.

"I don't know," she said, and started working the phones back to Washington, talking with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense chief Donald Rumsfeld and relaying information to the President. Bush remained publicly silent all through Sunday as U.S. diplomats looked for a discreet way out of the impasse. Bush knew that whatever signals he sent went not only to the Chinese but also to the rest of the world, which was waiting to see how an inexperienced new President would handle his first foreign policy test, how his instinct for caution would play against his equally instinctive impatience.

It would have to be China, of course, that first crossed the new President: this was, after all, a rival and maybe a threat, a vast market and a nimble supplier. And yet Bush had made it clear all through his campaign that he rejected what he considered Bill Clinton's tolerance of every Chinese outrage--the spy scandals, the weapons sales, the human rights abuses--so long as nothing got in the way of our growing trade. Bush clearly sided with those who favored a tougher line when he took to calling China a "strategic competitor," not a partner. That shift pleased a whole range of constituencies, evangelical Christians worried about religious persecution, union protectionists, unthawed cold warriors, human rights activists. But the business lobby had other agendas, and they were all going to be watching closely.

The Administration's initial response was to stay cool, keep quiet, give the Chinese room to move. "The message to the Chinese," says a White House official, "was, 'Guys, this is a very unfortunate incident. We'd like to get it wrapped up as quickly as possible, because if we can get it wrapped up soon, it won't become a crisis.'" But even Powell had trouble getting through for a private talk with anyone who mattered in Beijing, and the public tone was not encouraging. Chinese officials claimed that the U.S. plane had veered suddenly into the F-8 fighter, even though the EP-3E is about half as fast as and far less nimble than the Chinese jet. The collision had occurred about 70 miles off China's coast; China considers its sovereign airspace to extend 200 miles offshore, even though international agreements recognize only 12 miles. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao declared that the plane had violated Chinese airspace, landed without permission and thus lost its sovereign immunity--so the Chinese government would be perfectly within its rights to go aboard to try to figure out the reason for the intrusion.