HONG KONG -- In the end, China released those 24 members of the crew of the U.S. EP-3E reconnaissance plane just in the nick of time. The end of the crew's detention -- plus China's decision not to put any of the crew on trial, as some hardliners had advocated -- came just in time to undercut a growing spontaneous boycott of Chinese-made goods in the enormous U.S. market.
Much depends on how the story of Chinese-American relations plays out in the next few days. But the emotional reaction of American consumers to the detention of their air crew has put the Chinese on notice that they should not take for granted the demand for the made-in-China goods that have been proliferating in American shops in the past two decades.
Currently, China regularly replaces Japan as the nation with the largest trade surplus with the United States. But Americans have hardly noticed until now how dependent they have become on one particular nation for so many of their low-priced consumer goods.