c. 1997 Religion News Service
(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J. and a fellow of the Gallup International Institute.)
UNDATED _ Henry Luce must be spinning in his grave.
To the late Time/Life founder, the son of Presbyterian missionaries to China, the thought of communists ruling his adopted country was almost too much to bear. For more than 20 years, he used his magazines to wage a one-man war against the communist takeover of Nationalist China.
Thus, the symbolism embodied in President Jiang Zemin’s state visit would have undoubtedly sent Luce over the edge. Here was the very antithesis of democracy holding court at some of the republic’s holiest shrines _ the White House, Independence Hall, and the New York Stock Exchange, to name a few.
To Luce, the ultimate American patriot, it would surely mean the beginning of the apocalypse.
Many Americans, however, no longer think that way. Indeed, in the 30 years since Luce’s death, we have learned as a nation to think less in terms of black and white and more in varying shades of gray.
Slowly, we have begun to debunk the myths and stereotypes that color our perceptions of other nations. We no longer speak, as Ronald Reagan did of the Soviet Union, in terms of”evil empires.”Rather, in our post-Cold War world we have embraced the notion of ourselves and others as neighbors in a global village. Still, I can’t help wondering if there wasn’t a certain prescience to Luce’s point of view. To be sure, his abiding support for the corrupt regime of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was both rose-colored and overblown. Luce was passionate in his love for the China of his youth and saw in Chiang the means by which it could be preserved.
Yet his mistrust of Mao Tse-tung’s communist insurgents is worth noting, for like most successful revolutionaries, they came to power by seducing the masses. This power to seduce _ by giving the people the sound bites and media images they crave _ was on full display during Jiang’s state visit.
Witness, for example, his appearance at Harvard, the traditional bastion of American intellectualism. Speaking there against the advice of President Clinton, he proved himself equal to the task.
Like the savvy politician he is, he parried questions with poise, wit and intelligence _ remaining cool while protesters both inside and outside the auditorium pointedly expressed their opposition. In so doing, he won major points with the media and, I suspect, many American citizens, who respect cleverness and moxie regardless of the source.
Jiang came to America wanting to make a good impression and he accomplished his task. What’s more, he beat Americans at their own game. He got all of the media exposure he wanted, opened new vistas of economic opportunity for his country _ and politely told Americans that China’s oppression of its citizens was consistent with”both the history and reality”of the nation.
He conveyed a sense that, despite the Tiananmen Square massacre, he and the other leaders of his regime were just like other world leaders _ trying to lead their country in the best way possible.
This, I suspect, is what Luce feared. For once oppression can be explained away _ characterized, as the Chinese government has continued to insist, as an”internal”matter _ then human rights have no meaning and the authority of other nations to oppose their tyranny goes out the window.
In coming to America, Jiang desired the best of two worlds. He wanted a stage on which China could appear as a world power on par with the United States. At the same time, he wanted to make no concessions which would force him to loosen restrictions at home.
We gave him exactly what he wanted.
AMB END ATCHISON
