Creative multilingual diplomacy based on a mutual recognition that both sides have much more to lose than gain by escalation have combined to settle the Sino-US standoff over the spy plane grounded on Hainan Island. This is a great relief, not only for the two major powers involved but for all concerned with orderly relations between them. To appreciate this fully, one must have regard to what would have been the potentially gravely destabilising consequences of a deepening dispute, with the Bush administration still bedding down into office.
Rarely have semantic subtleties figured so prominently in a high profile diplomatic engagement. The Chinese demand for an apology carried connotations of responsibility and guilt for the collision between the US surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet, in which its pilot died. The US administration was not prepared to accept that; in the words of the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, they could express regret and sorrow, but not an apology.
The eventual compromise turns on the meaning of "bao quin" a Chinese phrase which can be translated as apology in that language - depending on the speaker's intention - and regret in English, in that it does not necessarily imply an error was made. Such sensitivities were amplified enormously on both sides of the dispute by the way popular feelings combined with configurations of political power. In China genuine feelings of outrage over US assertiveness and hegemony were quite clearly a factor. It is a salutary reminder that Chinese public opinion exists independently of its state-controlled political system.
In the US there were growing fears that the 24 crewmen would become hostages and demands for the firmest response by right-wing Republicans, keen to test the mettle of the Bush administration. Underlying issues and interests concerning trade, the future of Taiwan and Chinese rearmament flowed through these turbulent waves of public opinion. The question was whether these issues would be prematurely and antagonistically resolved by an escalation of the spy plane crisis ?
In the event, this has not been so. That is a first class diplomatic achievement, for which both states must be commended. To have avoided such a confrontation is no guarantee that Sino-US relations will be harmonious. But it is certainly a reassuring indication that the calculation of interest and advantage remains under relatively calm political control. President Bush and his foreign policy team have come well out of the affair. They have been forthright without being defiant in defence of their positions, while being open to creative compromise. Mr Bush's deliberate move to soften the confrontation by appealing for more time to allow diplomacy to work struck the right note.
It looks as if the outcome represents a victory for the conservative approach of Mr Powell rather than the hard-edged neo-conservatism of those who would wish to classify China as more of a threat than a partner. But that disagreement remains to be resolved, despite the benign outcome on this occasion.