Even as news that 24 United States air crew members were to be released following 11 days of captivity in Hainan Island, mainland-based US business leaders were expressing concern that the fallout from last week's air collision may cause far greater damage to Sino-US commercial ties than the bombing of China's Belgrade embassy two years ago.
Although no one was prepared to declare a bilateral business crisis was at hand, many commercial leaders were worried that the detention episode was poised to spark a brushfire that could consume the entire complex and shaded relationship that has developed between US companies and their Chinese hosts.
'The longer this has dragged on, the more difficult it has been for people like us who manage US-China commercial relations,' said Ning Shao, the managing director of Maryland's business centre in Shanghai.
Andy Rothman, China strategist at CLSA Emerging Markets, was more blunt: 'We are at the point now where significant damage has already been done and US commercial interests are going to be hurt, particularly for large contracts that are always influenced by the Chinese Government.'
What is immediately at stake is a trading relationship that is now worth more than US$116 billion a year, primarily through the export of US$100 billion of Chinese manufactured goods into the United States. But there are also thousands of US multinationals that have poured billions of dollars worth of foreign direct investment into China.
So far the evidence of damage is too incidental to show a pattern. The Aspen Institute, for example, has cancelled a mainland visit arranged for more than 20 US congressmen, as has Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, US retailer Kmart Corp, which sources many of its goods from the mainland, told The New York Times it had received thousands of angry calls and e-mail messages from customers urging the company to stop buying from China.
