Hainan Airplane Letter

I wrote this letter to the editor of the Deseret News in 2001 and just recently discovered that it was published.

http://archive.deseretnews.com/archive/836628/Plane-incident-irrelevant-for-most-Chinese.html

Listening to the media coverage of the downed U.S. plane in Hainan, it would be easy to get the impression that the Chinese state-run media are on the verge of igniting a rash of anti-American protests. Here in Nanjing, at least, that is not the case.

My family and I have been living here since last August, where I am teaching for a year at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese & American Studies at Nanjing University. We are part of a small American community here in this city of 5 million. We meet regularly with a very small group of LDS people living in town (five are from Brigham Young University's China Teachers Program, and one is a recent BYU graduate studying Chinese). From our point of view, interacting with Chinese students every day, it appears that for the time being, this is not a terribly serious issue.

Unlike after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago, when large crowds gathered spontaneously (but peacefully) to shout slogans and wave banners, nothing in the way of overt anti-Americanism is perceptible. The Chinese are very nationalistic (or patriotic, depending on your point of view) at times, especially the students and intellectuals. But for the average person on the street here it is just another new item with little direct relevance.

Perhaps the best illustration I can point to occurred yesterday afternoon as I was riding my bicycle through the downtown area. I stopped at a historic building to look inside, and after showing me around, a gentleman there asked me where I was from. I replied that I was from the United States and then mentioned that I was a bit nervous telling people that right now given the airplane incident. He laughed and said, "That's a nation problem, not a people problem."

It might be best to remember right now that the mood of the Chinese press does not necessarily mirror the mood of the majority of the Chinese people.

One thing that might come as a surprise is the amount of access Chinese citizens have to Western news sources over the Internet. CNN's Web site is regularly blocked, but there are myriad other sources available which are not. (The Deseret News being but one case in point).

While it is true that Internet access remains out of reach for the majority of Chinese, it is generally accessible to the students and intellectuals who were the most active element in the post-Belgrade demonstrations. Most students realize that the incident was an accident and not a deliberate attempt to harm. They may be a bit irked that U.S. surveillance planes regularly patrol their coast, but there seems to be little overt anger at America and Americans.