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.