Jiang hints at `unyielding policy` toward U.S.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who so far has said nothing about China-U.S. relations following the collision between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet during his recent visit to Cuba, gave an apparently meaningful four-line stanza of Chinese poetry he wrote to Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Jiang`s poetry reads: ``Ten days passed after (I) left the Chinese sky in the morning and came to South Africa after a long journey. The sound of the wind accompanied by rain on the coast facing each other is so strong. The green pine trees boast of their strength like mountains.``

Jiang gave it to Castro on Saturday at the end of his visit to Cuba on the first leg of his six-nation Latin American trip. The Chinese leader`s poetry draws attention in that he wrote it and gave to Castro at the very time when the conflicts between China and the United States have been worsening over the cause of the collision and ensuing problems.

News media in Hong Kong presumed that Jiang made an insinuating remark about relations between China and the United States. A newspaper interpreted that Jiang indicated that China would counter the United States over the Pacific firmly like green pine trees.

Professor Huang Zhilian of Jinhui University in Hong Kong explained that the ``coast facing each other means all of the Taiwan Straits between China and Taiwan, Florida Straits between Cuba and the U.S. and relations between China and the U.S. over the Pacific.`` He also interpreted that the ``sound of the wind accompanied by rain`` means the ``U.S. hegemony,`` and that China and Cuba never would yield to it and would counter it firmly like green pine trees.

Lee Jong-Hwan ljhzip@donga.com