Bush's Big Test: Saving Face

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Jiang's hard line revealed the weakness of his position at home. The crisis hit at the most delicate moment in his career since he took power after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. More than anyone else, he was responsible for restoring U.S.-China relations after that uprising. But Jiang turns 75 this year and is likely to resign his position at a party conference in the fall of 2002. The question is, Who will replace him and his allies, and which, if any, of his current titles will he be allowed to keep? So far he has fared badly, failing to maneuver his followers into key spots or secure a position for himself. His opponents, especially among military hard-liners, consider him too soft, too willing to submit to U.S. demands. So when word of the midair collision reached his home in the cloistered Zhongnanhai leadership compound in central Beijing, Jiang seized his chance to consolidate power by acting tough.

He wasn't the only one who saw an opportunity and took it. The Chinese military has been feeling sensitive ever since a high-level officer defected to the U.S. last December. Jiang has forced the People's Liberation Army to withdraw from many of its lucrative business enterprises, though he has tried to raise morale by boosting defense spending 18% this year. But many officers still feel that China has grown too chummy with the U.S. They resent the U.S. surveillance flights along the Chinese coastline--something the U.S. would never tolerate on its borders--and they resent the fact that the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Japan could defeat China's entire navy. "The military likes to have an enemy, and that's how it sees the U.S.," says a former Chinese official who had close contacts with the army. "It will insist that Jiang hang tough."

Though authoritarian leaders are supposed to be immune to polls and popular will, Jiang also had to worry about the Chinese public. Anger at the U.S. could easily twist into fury at him for failing to defend the motherland. "If Mao Zedong were the leader today, he would have shot down the American plane," says Li Hua, a physics student from Shanghai, who counts KFC as her favorite takeout. "But our leaders now don't have the guts to get in a fight." At first this incident looked like a reprise of the Belgrade embassy bombing. Anyone watching the official newscasts was led to believe that the U.S. plane had intentionally caused the collision. Variations on KILL THE IMPERIALIST AMERICAN PIGS littered Chinese Internet message boards. But during the street demonstrations that followed the Belgrade bombing, the leaders learned how hard it could be to control a passionate crowd and feared that anger could turn inward. This time anti-U.S. demonstrations were forbidden and posters taken down.