China vs. foggy bottom.(The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means for the United States )(Book Review)

The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means for the United States By Ross Terrill Basic Books, 432 pages, $30

Thirty years ago, the catch-phrase in political science circles was that people who studied the Soviet Union hated the object of their studies, while people specializing in modern China loved the object of theirs. There was truth in that. While the horrors of the Mao dictatorship did not go entirely unnoticed, even specialists tended to give the Chinese Communist Party the benefit of the doubt until well into the 1970s. Only when Simon Leys lifted the lid with his 1977 book Chinese Shadows was the true horror of Maoism exposed to the general public. Among casual observers--a category that unfortunately includes most Western politicians--illusions persisted for much longer.

As Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, put it, there is still a widespread feeling that China is "a Ming vase," to be handled carefully and reverently, and that Chinese sensibilities, as defined by her rulers, must be accorded the most exquisite and punctilious deference. The fact that Taiwan and mainland China are under two different governments is spoken of in polite diplomatic circles as a case of a nation tragically divided. The fact that Outer and Inner Mongolia are likewise under two different regimes--the first an independent nation, the second a Chinese colony--cannot be mentioned for fear of upsetting those fragile and combustible Chinese sensibilities.

This deference allows the Chinese communists to get away with murder--literally. While American Presidents and senior officials pass the Ming vase from hand to hand with utmost care, China's best and bravest suffer and die in labor camps. In The New Chinese Empire, Ross Terrill describes such disgraces as Jiang Zemin's carefully scripted 1997 "news conference" at Harvard University, where embarrassing questions were screened out in advance. Terrill sums up Bill Clinton's return visit to China the next year very succinctly: "Beijing played the American President like a violin" The violin recital goes on today: The author relates a conversation he had with State Secretary Colin Powell, two months after his 2001 visit to Beijing. Powell described the trip as "Excellent ... very encouraging." As Terrill demonstrates, the Powell visit was yet another game, set and match, for the communists.

How do China's communists get away with it? This penetrating and angry book supplies the answers. A large part of their success is simply due to a high level of skill in managing their situation. Statecraft has been a Chinese obsession since ancient times. The everyday Chinese language is riddled with proverbs and idioms from great diplomats and strategists of past times. If you look closely at this huge body of lore, a surprising amount of it deals with managing ...