• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

But it’s not merely on the Internet that one finds this prickliness. When Mattel was forced to recall millions of toys because of lead paint and safety concerns, the CEO of Mattel was compelled to very publicly apologize, or kowtow, to its leading Chinese supplier. True, there had been lead paint, but for one of the toys recalled, which had come with small magnetic balls that could do some severe damage to a child’s stomach, the problem had been a design flaw, which, technically, wasn’t the fault of the Chinese manufacturer. As parents around the world rummaged through their kids’ toy boxes, tossing out everything from Thomas the Tank Engine locomotives to Polly Pocket play sets, the Chinese seized on this design flaw and demanded an apology. Some might say that this is simply a reflection of the importance of preserving face in China. Perhaps, although I don’t think there is anything uniquely Chinese about the concept of face. In the Arab world, it would be called honor. In American culture, we’d call it respect.

But in truth, I wasn’t interested in face, honor, or respect. I was interested in nationalism, and for nationalism to really start galloping ahead, it needs an enemy. For a while, way back in the nineties (can we have that decade back, please?), it seemed likely that the United States would fulfill that role. Every year, when China’s trading status as a Most Favored Nation came up for renewal, members of Congress from both parties would loudly denounce religious oppression in China or the appalling work conditions of its factory workers or, with the Cold War still a fresh memory, the inconvenient fact that China was still Red China and confidently ignoring the bells of freedom ringing elsewhere in the world. And then they’d vote to grant China Most Favored Nation status. Business is business, of course. Nevertheless, these annual denunciations of China did little to engender soft and fuzzy feelings for the U.S. among the Chinese, except possibly among the religiously oppressed, exploited factory workers, and political dissidents. Then, during NATO’s bombing campaign against the Serbs, the U.S. very accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three diplomats and injuring twenty. Oopsie, said the U.S. So sorry. We had the wrong map. Belgrade, Belgium, so hard to keep them straight.

The Chinese erupted. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in dozens of cities throughout China. The American Embassy in Beijing was pelted with rocks and diplomats were forced into the bunker. It was an accident. Honest. No one in China believed this. How could the government of the United States, the last superpower still standing, be so inept? The protests continued. American flags were burned. And throughout China, Americans everywhere found themselves sewing Canadian flags on their backpacks. As the protesters raged, the government encouraged them onward, until finally, after the American Embassy’s windows had been shattered and the diplomats inside had been thoroughly terrified, and President Clinton had issued his twenty-fourth public apology and promised to wear a hair shirt and flog himself daily, the Chinese government called the protesters off. The point had been made. Do not fuck with us.

Three years later, a hot-dogging Chinese fighter pilot collided with an American spy plane above international waters just outside of China. The fighter pilot tumbled into the South China Sea and the stricken spy plane limped toward the nearest airfield, which, most inconveniently for a spy plane spying on China, was a military airfield on Hainan Island. What a bonus, thought the Chinese government as they pondered what to do with this high-tech surveillance plane that had been eavesdropping on electronic communications and phone calls in their country. Here were secrets to be deciphered. Technology to be reverse-engineered. Though they let the crew go after eleven days, they held on to the plane for another three months, and when