Diplomacy of Damage Control } 487
means to resolve the confrontation in Beijing, and regretted when this was
not done. Most US allies followed suit. It would be a mistake to conclude that
other Western countries were merely responding to US expectations. They
were acting, rather, on the basis of the Enlightenment norms of conditional
state sovereignty. Embrace of those norms was, after all, an important part of
the Western struggle for individual freedom over many decades. Thus, British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher expressed shock and indignation over the
killing of unarmed civilians. French President Francois Mitterrand froze
high-level contacts with China and expressed the view that a government
that fired on its country’s youth had no future. West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl expressed shock and outrage, saying that it was simply imper-
missible for states to fire on their own citizens.^4 Even Brazil departed from
its long-standing practice of not commenting on the internal affairs of other
countries to condemn the bloodshed in Beijing.
Sanctions gave substance to declarations of protest. On June 5, President
Bush, responding to popular anger, ordered the temporary suspension of
arms sales to China, the suspension of military exchanges, and the review
of bilateral agreements. A short while later, the United States announced it
would waive visa requirements to allow the 45,000 PRC students then study-
ing in the United States to remain in the United States after completing
their studies. The United States also announced it would oppose new loans
to China by multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Asia
Development Bank, and urged other countries to follow suit. Japan changed
the status of China’s exports from general to special, requiring approval on a
case-by-case basis. Tokyo also suspended aid to China, freezing a large loan.
Other sanctions were announced by Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Greece, the
Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland.^5
Deng Xiaoping had greatly underestimated the negative international im-
pact of the use of military force in Beijing. Shortly before 6-4, Deng had told
his Politburo comrades that international negative reaction to the use of mil-
itary force to re-establish control would last a mere few months and then dis-
sipate. In fact, the moral onus of the Beijing Massacre would continue to nag
China for decades.
The Beijing Massacre threatened to have disastrous consequences for the
reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty scheduled for 1997. The on-
going discussions between Britain and China over the modalities for rever-
sion were thrown into disarray, leaving an array of crucial issues in abeyance,
such as building and paying for a new airport and the inclusion in the Basic
Law of the right of labor to strike and protest. Most people in Hong Kong
were refugees from communist rule in China, or the descendants of such ref-
ugees, and 6-4 touched on many negative memories, raising fears that China’s
new hard-line leadership would dismantle Hong Kong’s free economic and
social system after reversion. There had been strong support in Hong Kong