Constraining Unipolarity } 555
rendered its decision in September 1993, the Beijing Massacre was already
four years in the past and China had entered a new stage of expanded open-
ing and reform following Deng Xiaoping’s successful early 1992 effort to rein-
vigorate those policies. When IOC head Juan Samaranch announced Sydney,
Australia’s selection, there was considerable disappointment among ordinary
Chinese about Beijing’s failure. Many blamed the outcome on the United
States.^49
In July 1993, while Beijing’s Olympics campaign was in high gear, the House
of Representatives of the US Congress passed a resolution calling on the IOC
not to award the 2000 games to Beijing because of China’s “massive viola-
tions of human rights.” In the Senate, sixty senators supported a similar res-
olution. Chinese officials strongly denounced these resolutions as violations
of the Olympics spirit of independence from politics. Beijing Deputy Mayor
Zhang Baifa threatened that China would boycott the 1996 Olympics, which
had already been awarded to Atlanta in the United States. This threat was
later negated by other officials, but it expressed China’s anger. “The American
people are very good to us. It’s their Congress which is stupid,” Zhang Baifa
told the media.^50 “Why does the U.S. go out of its way to get into other people’s
business?” asked one Beijing citizen interviewed by a popular US magazine.^51
Upon his return to Beijing from Monaco, where the IOC had met to make its
decision, Chen Xitong briefed CCP leaders on how “hostile Western powers
led by the United States” had smeared and bad-mouthed China to under-
mine its Olympics bid.^52 The Chinese media, guided by the CCP’s propaganda
department, began to stress the same theme. For the first time, CCP propa-
ganda targeting “hostile Western powers led by the United States” began to
resonate with the Chinese public.
The second incident that gave traction to the CCP’s anti-US propaganda was
nearly simultaneous with the Olympic imbroglio and involved a 20,000-ton
Chinese containership named Yinhe (Galaxy). In July (while Beijing was lob-
bying intensely for the Olympics), the Yinhe loaded cargo in Dalian, Liaoning
province, and set sail for Iran. Shortly after the ship’s departure from Dalian,
the US embassy in Beijing informed China’s MFA that the Yinhe had loaded
cargos of several chemicals used to manufacture chemical weapons, and the
United States, therefore, insisted that the ship either return to port or submit
to inspection. The MFA pointed out that neither the PRC nor the United States
had ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) banning trade in
specified chemicals, and that no international authority had empowered the
United States to conduct unilateral inspection of other country’s commercial
shipping. “If such behavior of a self-styled ‘world cop’ is to be condoned, can
there still be justice, sovereign equality and normal state-to-state relations in
the world?” the MFA asked the United States. Yet the Chinese government
had issued “clear-cut” orders banning shipment of the indicated chemicals, it
said, and would investigate whether they were included in the Yinhe’s c a rgo.^53