So it was all just a simple misunderstanding. Case closed, right? According to the wires, China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told President Dubya at the White House Wednesday that the Kitty Hawk affair was just a mix up of some kind. No explanation of what that means or how the exact same “misunderstanding” happened a few days earlier. These grudging, semi-demi-hemi apologies just make me wonder even more about what is really going on. As I said originally, a misunderstanding between Beijing and the People’s Liberation Army generals, with the latter not really misunderstanding anything at all but maybe wanting to show that they’re no walkovers, still seems the likeliest–and most worrying–scenario.
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