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- <text id=92TT2487>
- <title>
- Nov. 02, 1992: Mixed Hospitality
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Nov. 02, 1992 Bill Clinton's Long March
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 16
- WORLD
- Mixed Hospitality
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Reforming China welcomes one visitor and snubs another
- </p>
- <p> To most East Asians, China ia their Greece and Rome: the great
- fount from which their civilizations sprang. Today, as China
- struggles to find new directions with the help of neighbors, it
- still expects its due in homages -- even though two recent
- visits to Beijing showed how hard it remains to reconcile the
- past and present. Emperor Akihito, the first Japanese sovereign
- ever to set foot in the Middle Kingdom, was constrained by
- domestic politics to stop short of apologizing for Imperial
- Japan's brutal 1931-45 occupation of much of China. Many Chinese
- still painfully recall the period's atrocities, but Akihito, to
- appease Japanese rightists who had protested his trip, could not
- go to the extent of asking for national forgiveness.
- </p>
- <p> While Beijing accepted his declaration of "deeply
- deploring" the war record, officials gave no such leeway to
- Christopher Patten, Hong Kong's gutsy new British Governor. On
- his first visit to China, Patten was snubbed by the top brass
- and told curtly that his ideas for further democratizing Hong
- Kong before the 1997 Chinese takeover were unacceptable. Beijing
- threatened to annul such political reforms, even if Deng
- Xiaoping's economic reforms are mainland gospel today. Chinese
- reverence for the wisdom of age was clear when the 14th
- Communist Party Congress's 2,000 delegates cheered the ultimate
- appearance of Deng, 88. Tottering into the Great Hall of the
- People, he congratulated the congress on its "great success" in
- endorsing bolder economic liberalization -- an agenda that will
- need Japan's and Hong Kong's help to succeed.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-