Quest for Modernity and the Tides of History } 773
In hot confrontations that touched on historic memories of “humiliation”
and appeared to the public as contemporary humiliation, Beijing actually
escalated tension and confrontation with the United States. With the Taiwan
Strait confrontation in 1995–1996, for example, it was Beijing that escalated
the conflict from the political-diplomatic level to the military level with its
July–August missile “tests,” and then ratcheted up the level of military ten-
sion by steadily expanding the scope of its military exercises. With the 1999
Belgrade embassy bombing, Beijing unleashed demonstrations that brought
US diplomatic buildings under siege and posed real physical danger to US per-
sonnel, while Jiang Zemin twice refused hotline calls from Clinton intended
to defuse the situation. In the meantime, China’s media withheld from the
Chinese public information about repeated US apologies, apparently in order
to give time for hatred of the United States to vent. In the case of the 2001
airplane collision, Beijing escalated the conflict by immediately demanding
an apology before the crash was investigated, and by detaining the US crew.
In all three “hot confrontations” (Taiwan in 1995–1996, Belgrade in 1999, EP-3
in 2001), Beijing ordered the media to frame US actions as part of a broad pat-
tern of US hostility and insult of China. Explanations of US moves as stupid
US accidents (as with the embassy bombing) or as manifestations of the US
system of separation of powers (as with the Lee Teng-hui visa decision) were
dismissed out of hand and the matter seen, instead, as part of a long and vast
US strategy of aggression against China.
Analysts differ about the extent to which autonomous (non-state-directed)
popular nationalism influences CCP foreign policy decisions. One scholar
argued that web-based popular nationalism constitutes a sort of echo chamber
that significantly influenced foreign policy decisions.^23 The twenty-four-hour
cable news cycle, combined with the availability of that coverage via Internet
and Hong Kong broadcasts, meant that news of international events reached
China’s public quickly and unfiltered by government censors. The ability of
the state to restrict or ban access to information had been greatly reduced.
This meant that when a hot crisis occurred, party leaders were aware that
news of the event would almost immediately spread through the Chinese
public. News presented by foreign news sources would probably be sensation-
alistic and focus on violence, since that attracts readers in China as in other
countries. Once the news of some insult of China hit the streets, there would
be a strong impulse for the leaders to make known their own position, stress-
ing their anger over the newest insult of China. There would be a strong ten-
dency for the government, and for individual leaders vulnerable to challenge
by rivals, to try to put themselves at the head of nationalist public opinion,
lest they become the target of that public opinion for being slow and wea-
kin defense of China’s honor. To position itself before mobilized nationalist
opinion as a resolute defender of China’s interests and honor, the government
would probably define the offensive episode as part of a deliberate long-term