Should We Fear China?

Jiuquan, a small town in the gritty deserts of northwestern China, was a place once moderately celebrated around the world as the birthplace of that most singular vegetable, rhubarb. But, along with the profound changes that have engulfed modern China, this remote and half-forgotten town has lately taken a very different direction from its botanical beginnings. It has become instead -- and largely because of its splendid isolation -- the main launch center for China's ever-swelling armada of space rockets.

And at the entrance to its interplanetary complex there is currently a billboard, half in English, that bristles with pride at the community's makeover. In very large letters at its base there is written a slogan that Western visitors may find more than a little chilling. It proclaims, and without apparent fear of contradiction or challenge: "Without Haste. Without Fear. We Will Conquer the World."

It is a sentiment well worth bearing in mind the next time you go -- as all visitors to Beijing should -- to see China's daily national flag-raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square. This event takes place in precisely the location where the tragedy of two decades ago happened. And it is everything that what these days is referred to as merely "the incident" was not. It is precise, disciplined, impeccably choreographed and hugely impressive.

The reverent crowds that show up in the chill before sunrise to watch do not seem to be aware at all that 20 years ago the pavement on which they stand was soaked in blood, that crushed bicycles and injured demonstrators lay all about, that trucks filled with soldiers careered wildly along the grand avenues, rifles blazing in all directions, and that the square was ringed with tanks and armored cars -- all directed at a few thousand defenseless young campaigners for freedom and democracy.