China's Jiang Zemin evokes Pearl Harbor history

China's Jiang Zemin evokes Pearl Harbor history

Chinese President Jiang Zemin's just completed eight-day tour
of the United States was hardly the landmark visit which the
Chinese said it would be. Noting the lack of concrete
achievement, The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin
reflects on one little noticed ceremony with which Jiang began
his odyssey.

HONG KONG (JP): Sometime in 1998, the last great battleship
ever to serve on active duty, the USS Missouri, is due to arrive
in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The ship is in excellent condition even though she is 54 years
old and has been decommissioned since 1992. Sadly, Missouri will
almost certainly not arrive under her own steam, but under tow.

The Clinton Administration, which has pursued one of the great
peacetime rundown of the still-powerful U.S. Navy, says it cannot
afford the few dollars required to keep the USS Missouri in the
reserve fleet, ready to be refitted for active duty in the power
balance, should the occasion arise.

So the battleship is due to be anchored in perpetuity on
Battleship Row in the Pearl Harbor naval base, since even the
Clinton Administration realizes it is too historically important
a vessel to be sold for scrap.

The USS Missouri came to mind because there is very little to
be said about the "achievement" of the Sino-American summit in
Washington last week. This conclusion was confirmed when the
White House issued a four page "fact sheet" detailing the
"accomplishments" of the summit.

The more you read the "facts", the more clearly the slight
summit achievement came into focus. If the summit had been truly
significant they would not have had to hurriedly issue a fact
sheet.

Essentially, the Jiang Zemin-Li Peng administration was
primarily focussed on playing power politics at home, using the
visit to show the domestic audience that even the United States
courted China under its current leadership.

As ever, the Clinton Administration tried hard to avoid
international power politics, and was more concerned with image,
not least that it should not appear too friendly to China, while
extending all the courtesies which the Chinese insisted upon.

This being so, the most strategically suggestive moment in
President Jiang Zemin's eight-day odyssey to the United States
came when the Chinese leader took the time and trouble to visit
Battleship Row himself.

There Jiang laid a massive wreath on the floating memorial
above the USS Arizona, the battleship sent to the bottom while
still at anchor, a few minutes after Japanese aircraft started
bombing Pearl Harbor at 8 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941.

In an additional gesture, Jiang cast a smaller wreath on the
once-turbulent waters beneath which the USS Arizona has its
permanent resting place. From the TV pictures I think it was
explained to Mrs. Jiang that to this very day small drops of oil
leak out of the Arizona, and will be go on leaking for many
decades to come.

Since history also seeps out of the Arizona wreck, the moment
was strategically suggestive for several reasons.

First and last, it was a reminder that for the Chinese people,
and particularly for their political leadership, history lives,
in more ways than one. The Jiang wreath-laying on the Arizona was
a carefully-crafted gesture, pointedly reminding the Americans of
the last time there was a Sino-American alliance in power
politics. "It was important," Chinese Foreign Ministry chief
spokesman Shen Guofeng said, when asked to explain the wreath-
laying, "to mark the time when China and the U.S. stood shoulder
to shoulder fighting fascism".

Americans, by contrast, are forgetful of history and
disdainful of power politics. More accurately, they are so
usually too worried about making the future better than the
present that they are seldom over-concerned about the past.
Since, for many Americans, a renewed Sino-American alliance is
simply not on the cards, Jiang's visit to Battleship Row drew
little attention.

So, secondly, while the Chinese were definitely making a
subtle anti-Japanese point, most Americans probably missed that,
too. It is inconceivable that the Chinese officials arranging
Jiang's program were unmindful of the fact that, so far, and
despite the much-vaunted alliance with the United States, no
Japanese Prime Minister has yet laid a wreath on the USS Arizona.

The perfect moment for that gesture came on the fiftieth
anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. By Japanese
standards, a relatively cosmopolitan Prime Minister, Kiichi
Miyazawa, was in office, who should have seen the need, and done
the deed. But the moment was missed at the insistence of Japanese
bureaucrats, a handful of whom are still vainly trying to prove,
to this day, that on Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese military did not
fully intend to take the U.S. by surprise.

Since the Chinese also have many historical "problems left
over by history" vis-a-vis Japan, Jiang's minders no doubt
thought it a good idea to remind the Americans of their's.

If, thirdly, the USS Missouri had already been tied up at the
other end of Battleship Row, it would have given the Chinese a
fascinating choice to make:

Should Jiang still place the wreath on the USS Arizona,
commemorating the day in 1941 when America belatedly started to
come more actively to China's rescue -- after China had been
assailed by the Japanese for over a decade, since the loss of
Manchuria in 1931?

Or should Jiang instead lay the wreath on the deck of the USS
Missouri on the very spot where American and Chinese military
leaders counter-signed the Japanese surrender in 1945, at the
climax of the wartime Sino-American alliance?

If asked, many would assume the wreath would still be laid on
the Arizona. The Chinese not only remember history, they remember
historical grudges, too.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur presided over the surrender ceremony in
1945, and it was MacArthur who wanted to take the Korean War into
China, before he was fired by President Harry Truman.

Not so long ago, in a moment of incredible pettiness, ill
befitting a great nation, the Chinese refused to accept a
painting exhibition because it included a MacArthur portrait. The
Americans canceled the show.

For all that, if a choice had to be made, I am not so sure the
Chinese would not lay the wreath on the surrender deck of the
Missouri.

This is because, fourthly, Jiang's wreath-laying was almost
certainly a nod in the direction of those Chinese advocating the
long-term goal of a strategic partnership between Washington and
Beijing. There are evidently some Chinese think-tanks already
pushing this idea. Since, inevitably, the product of Chinese
think-tanks is not readily available, even in Chinese let alone
English, it is not yet possible to fully grasp their ideas.

At first glance, given the summit's paltry gains, the
conflicting national interests, the numerous current Sino-
American differences and the latent antagonism beneath the
surface on both sides of the relationship, a strategic
partnership appears out of the question.

But the possibility of such an alliance emerging, while
remote, can never be wholly ruled out, given the emotional and
therefore volatile American attitudes towards China, and above
all the romantic notions which so many Americans, especially
China experts, still hold about the Middle Kingdom.

So, sixth, Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and
Russian President Boris Yeltsin had plenty to talk about as they
avoided sharing a sauna in the East Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk
this past weekend. It is inconceivable that the two leaders would
have missed the symbolism of Jiang's wreath-laying on the USS
Arizona.

Even more important, as Yeltsin and Hashimoto took a major
step by setting a deadline for ending World War II between Japan
and Russia, in part, at least, it must have been because they or
their officials remembered the impact of World War II on Sino-
American relations.