Sunanda K Datta-Ray: The power protocol

That China feels protocol conveys power shows it isn't quite there yet.

The Sino-US summit confirmed Chinese pernicketiness about protocol as an expression of power. Though Hu Jintao sent only two junior functionaries to represent China, he insisted that Barack Obama himself inaugurate the conference. With more than $800 billion of US Treasury bonds in Chinese hands, the president had no choice.

China gained additional face when Obama allowed the two Chinese delegates, so much his junior in rank, to disclaim with unconvincing modesty his ingratiating compliments about China’s great power status.

A Chinese Singaporean play, ‘Emily of Emerald Hill’, nicely illustrates that fastidiousness about form is not only empty vanity. A couple celebrates the lunar new year in the traditional way by prostrating themselves before the man’s aged father who is delighted with the obeisance. But his daughter-in-law, who plans the ceremony, has another purpose in mind. If she and her husband ko-tow to his father, her husband’s younger brother and his wife, whom she detests, would have to ko-tow to them, thus acknowledging their seniority and setting the tone of the relationship.

Such stratagems go back to the Middle Kingdom which changed its name but not its character. Manchu emperors refused to receive British envoys unless they prostrated themselves before the throne which no self-respecting Briton would do. Both sides were acutely aware that ko-towing signalled subjection.

Now, with the economy roaring ahead like Shanghai’s superfast Maglev train, Obama says China and the US will “shape the course of the 21st century”. No, no, Chinese dignitaries protest, they “still see China as a developing country” though, admittedly, 80 per cent of Europeans regard China as the most powerful country in the world after the US. It’s probably the pairing that Fu Ying, China’s ambassador in Britain, objected to in a newspaper article whose oozing ’umility even Uriah Heep would envy. China has a “long way to go to reach the level of world power” he wrote, though there is no doubt about the destination. Meanwhile, if China and the US must be called G2 or ‘Chinamerica’, an indebted US cannot presume or pretend to be the senior partner. As for childishly vain ‘Chindia’, the impertinent Indians might need to be taught another lesson.

Fu refers to the ‘puzzling duality’ China presents to the world. Actually, it’s as old as the insistence on rank. When a mysterious Chinese in mandarin robe, pigtail and pillbox hat turned up at Queen Victoria’s coronation, flustered court officials, fearing he had been sent by the Celestial Emperor and would be touchy about protocol, placed him with the dukes and archbishops. It turned out next morning he was the owner of a humble junk moored in the Thames. Was that the first fast one China pulled on the West?

So, it’s easy to understand Chinese chagrin when Bill Clinton churlishly refused to receive Jiang Zemin with full head of state honours. Jiang’s subtle revenge baffled the Americans. Far from matching ungraciousness with ungraciousness, Jiang’s regime showered every honour on Clinton when he visited China. The world’s oldest continuous civilisation took pride and pleasure in demonstrating to the Western barbarians the lavishness with which a cultured host receives his guest.

Jiang seized another chance to flaunt the power of protocol at the handover ceremony in Hongkong and demonstrate that the successor to the Son of Heaven is a more august personage than the heir to England’s queen. Prince Charles, representing his mother, pulled his speech out of an inner pocket of his jacket, placed it on the lectern and after reading it, folded the pages and put them back in his pocket. Nothing so humdrum for Jiang. An aide rushed up to place his speech on the lectern. Jiang stalked up and read it though admittedly without using a pair of gold chopsticks to turn the pages as his imperial predecessors do in films. But reading over, he stalked back leaving the speech where it was. The aide again retrieved the folder.

But sticklers though they are for rank, the Chinese could pick up a hint from Charles’s great great great grandmother. The French were disappointed by dumpy black clad Victoria when she visited the self-styled Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie until the two national anthems had been played at the opera. The glamorous and bejewelled Eugenie turned back to pull up her chair whereas Victoria lowered herself vertically while staring straight ahead. Parisians realised then that the true queen knew there would always be a seat wherever the royal posterior chose to descend. Power needs no protocol.