Will the Chinese ever cease to amaze us? Let us imagine last month’s anti-American demonstrations in Beijing taking place around a U.S. embassy in an Arab or African country. Or the repeated refusal of a country’s leader to accept a phone call from an American president ready to offer an apology for an acknowledged wrong. Would the United States tolerate such treatment from another nation? Would it stand by without protest as thousands of students virtually imprison its ambassador and lay siege to its embassy? Who can doubt that there would be formal protests and threats to suspend diplomatic ties. Why then such indulgence of the Chinese?

The bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was an almost incomprehensible mistake and a terrible tragedy. But it was a mistake, not a provocation. We should be remorseful, especially for the deaths of the three civilians in the embassy. It was right to apologize. And we should thoroughly investigate the failure of American intelligence agencies to properly locate the bombing target. But having said all of that, the question remains: Why does the United States government tolerate these diplomatic pyrotechnics from the Chinese government?

Theories abound. The first is that the Clinton administration has invested immense political capital in improved relations with the Chinese, especially economic relations. In this, American business has been four-square behind Clinton. Furthermore, if the Republicans occupied the executive office, this would more or less be their policy as well. A peaceful future depends on good relations with the Chinese, the most populous nation in the world and a major economic and political power, if not right now, certainly in the next century. No one wants the Chinese for an enemy. And so we put up with their shabby-and carefully orchestrated-behavior.

A second theory has to do with the internal politics of China and the continuing struggle between the Communist appartachiks and the reformers and modernizers. It is a struggle over who will control the Chinese future and the ability of the Chinese people to work their way out of poverty and oppression. It is in the interests of everyone, especially the Chinese themselves, that the reformers and modernizers prevail. Thus the bottom line of this theory: We must put up with shabby treatment to preserve the economic and political reforms underway.

A third theory addresses the Chinese effort to buy into the American political system with illegal campaign contributions and to increase their status as a nuclear power by stealing American military secrets. As evidence of these "factoids" has emerged, those who hold to this theory conclude that the Chinese mounted demonstrations to distract American attention. If true, they succeeded.

There is a fourth theory specific to the war with the Serbs. The Russians and the Chinese have opposed the NATO intervention over ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Of course, each has different interests, but there is at least one they share. Both nations have conducted wars based on ethnic identity, the Russians most recently in Chechnya. During the 1950s, the Chinese notoriously killed or forced from their homeland, hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, who even now await the chance to return. Would it be a mistake to conclude that the Chinese government’s interest coincides with the Serbs not out of compassion or principle, but out of refusal to accept accountability for human-rights violations, including ethnic cleansing along with abuses against their own people? For the Chinese the question is: If the West will go to war over Kosovo, will it go to war over a Tibet or a Taiwan? We doubt it, especially after Kosovo. But the Chinese are not so sure. (Paradoxically, the Chinese histrionics have derailed efforts to negotiate a settlement with the Serbs under the auspices of the United Nations where they and the Russians hold a Security Council veto.)

Which of these theories is true? All or some of them may be true, or partially true, reflecting the multidimensional mess in which the United States, NATO, and the UN find themselves in trying to end the war in Kosovo. In the meantime, is the United States properly chastised by the Chinese for the embassy bombing, for the deaths involved, and for its intelligence failure? Yes, certainly.

Still, we ought to ask whether what is salutary for the United States and NATO in the Chinese protest is good for China. Has this confrontation been just politics as the four theories, and many others, imply? Or, perhaps more worrisome, are the Chinese continuing to operate with the mindset of the heavenly kingdom, that ancient and classic conception of their cultural and ethnic superiority? That was the attitude implied in the Vietnam-era phrase, "the paper tiger," used by China to dismiss the American presence in Southeast Asia. If in response to the embassy bombing, China is "wagging the paper tiger," then there is more to be learned from this incident about the difficulties ahead for U.S.-Chinese relations than first appears. Ultimately it is the Chinese who must learn what it means to coexist peacefully with another major power in a world where increasing conflicts and tensions are likely. But who is willing to point it out to them? Who dare point it out to them?