Recent History Of U.S.-China Tensions
KARUNA SHINSHO, ASIA TONIGHT: Well, the standoff threatens relations between China and United States. But as Mike Chinoy reports, trans-Pacific tensions are a familiar pattern in dealings between the two countries.</s>MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was 30 years ago that a team of American ping-pong players arrived in Beijing and put an end to decades of Cold War estrangement between China and the United States. This is the beginning again of our friendship, Chinese premier Chou En-lai told the American visitors. This will meet support of our two peoples. Today, amidst the continuing spy plane standoff, Sino-American friendship is very much in question. In fact, though, George W. Bush is hardly the first U.S. president to confront a crisis with China soon after taking office.</s>WINSTON LORD, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA: There is a theme that keeps coming up, and that is the those who are campaigning for office often sound more hawkish than the incumbent in Oval Office. Then when they got in the Oval Office, they recognize that this was a very complex relationship, and it has pluses and well as minuses that had to be carefully handled and that some adjustments in rhetoric and approach were necessary.</s>CHINOY: Ronald Reagan, for example, campaigned for the presidency promising to reestablish diplomatic ties with Taiwan and sell the island more weapons. Although Reagan eventually visited China, relations with Beijing were poisoned for the first two years of his administration until the signing of a new Sino-American communique regulating U.S. arm sales. George Bush inherited a stable U.S.-China relationship. But six months after Bush took office, Chinese hard-liners crushed pro-democracy student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The crackdown shattered the U.S. domestic consensus on engaging with China. For the rest of his term, George Bush struggled to maintain a workable Sino-American relationship.</s>BILL CLINTON, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: An America that will not coddle tyrants from Baghdad to Beijing.</s>CHINOY: Candidate Bill Clinton denounced that approach and linked trade concessions for China to progress on human rights. It took nearly four years of constant friction with the Chinese before Clinton switched approaches by advocating a strategic partnership with Beijing. Now George W. Bush has assumed power, promising to replace engagement with competition. For the Chinese government, it's a familiar story.</s>ROBERT ROSS, BOSTON COLLEGE: The problem for the Chinese is that's what every administration has done since Jimmy Carter. And they have to come back and say, no, we do matter.</s>CHINOY (on camera): The history of recent decades has shown that after each confrontation, the U.S. and China moved to stabilize their relationship. The question now is with the spy plane crisis whether that same pattern will prevail or whether this will be seen as a turning point for the hope of long-term Sino-American friendship disappeared. Mike Chinoy, CNN, Hong Kong.