China bashing is in vogue. Many Americans now believe that China will be the enemy of the United States in the 21st century. And Chinese in the States are left torn between conflicting loyalties to their native and adopted lands. The vast majority of us are law-abiding and productive members of society, grateful for the freedom to pursue careers and opportunities we could never imagine back in China. True, many of us maintain close ties to China, but we are working to bridge the enormous cultural and political gaps between our two countries. We believe deeply that closer relations with the United States will help move China toward a more tolerant and humane society. If anything, we are agents of American values. To be suspected as spies and nuclear thieves could hardly be more disillusioning.
The anti-Chinese sentiment has deeply distorted press coverage of the Los Alamos case. All we really know is that a Taiwan-born scientist, Wen Ho Lee, attended a seminar in Beijing in the 1980s and allegedly leaked information about W-88 nuclear-warhead technology. But the facts are hazy at best. Did Lee leak information inadvertently? Did he pass on weapons designs, or just a scientific principle that the Chinese then used to develop a design on their own? Did China recruit him? Was he a paid agent? Was this an isolated leak or a working relationship? Even the U.S. government lacks sufficient evidence to arrest Lee, who has not been charged with any crime. So why is the press so eager to portray this as a case of cloak-and-dagger “espionage” if not because it views China as a hostile power?
It is profoundly troubling that reporters and politicians fail to distinguish between espionage and the exchange of ideas. Scientific progress depends on the increasingly free exchange of ideas among researchers and across national borders. It would be self-defeating for the United States to halt the flow. Half the engineering students in American graduate schools are foreign-born. For years Los Alamos National Lab itself was open to foreign visitors.
Until recently, at least, many American academics embraced such exchanges, and not only in the interest of science. In the 1970s South Korea and Taiwan moved up on the technological ladder as their engineering students acquired American know-how. Such advances helped foster prosperity and stability in Asia. At the same time, foreign economists and political scientists trained at American universities often become leading advocates for reform at home. Nowadays many Chinese scholars speak out for free-market principles and democratic values when they go to China. But these missionaries depend on the same forums for free discussion through which Lee might have leaked nuclear secrets.
Many of us believe that the press bias against China goes far beyond the Los Alamos case. Fears of the “Yellow Peril” are magnified by yellow journalism. No matter what China does, the media sees some sinister intention. China’s large trade surplus is reported as a threat to American economic interests. Yet when China tries to buy satellite equipment from Hughes Electronics Corp., which would shrink some of this surplus, the press cries out that Beijing is grabbing sensitive military technology to unleash against America.
Republicans are gearing up for the presidential campaign in 2000, and their rhetoric also is stridently anti-Chinese. Criticisms of China range from its human-rights record to unfair trade practices. Never mind that China has made huge progress in promoting social and economic freedoms. Never mind that the United States has singlehandedly blocked Chinese entry into WTO, which would bind the country to international trade and investment rules. For years American officials and academics have lectured China about the importance of lobbying Congress. Yet when the Chinese acted on this advice, they touched a nerve that erupted in the “donor-gate” scandals.
Now American commentators are drawing false analogies between China and the Soviet Union. During the cold war the Kremlin maintained a vast intelligence apparatus for the explicit purpose of penetrating and undermining the West. The Los Alamos case unfolded in the 1980s, when China was fortifying its nuclear forces against the Soviet Union, not against the United States. Whatever China did with U.S. nuclear-warhead technology, it is no ideological enemy of America. China does not see the United States as a foe and has cooperated with Washington on many fronts, including defusing tensions on the Korean peninsula.
To equate China with the Soviet Union is a travesty. China is moving away from central planning and toward American-style capitalism. Political reform is not far behind. Beijing is introducing rural-township elections that represent the world’s largest experiment in grass-roots democracy. No doubt China still has a long way to go. But most Chinese see America as a model, a friend, and many also count it as home. We ask only that America respond in kind.
