Nearly 16 amazing years have passed since Chinese soldiers slaughtered thousands of their fellow citizens protesting corruption and misrule. The Soviet empire, wars in the Balkans and in Iraq, and a flood of dot-com billionaires and paupers have come and/or gone in that busy time.
So it came as no great surprise last autumn when Chinese officials made a quiet but insistent request to European Union leaders: You have changed. So have we. Lift the arms embargo imposed after the 1989 “events.” The Chinese request seemed to be, well, another geopolitical slam-dunk.
Except suddenly it isn’t.