Mixed Hospitality

TO MOST EAST ASIANS, CHINA IS 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.

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.