United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade

On May 7, 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (Operation Allied Force), five U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munition guided bombs hit the People's Republic of China embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese state media journalists and outraging the Chinese public.[2] According to the U.S. government, the intention had been to bomb the nearby Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP). President Bill Clinton apologized for the bombing, stating it was an accident.[3][4][5] Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet testified before a congressional committee that the bombing was the only one in the campaign organized and directed by his agency,[6] and that the CIA had identified the wrong coordinates for a Yugoslav military target on the same street.[7] The Chinese government issued a statement on the day of the bombing, stating that it was a "barbarian act".[8]

United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade
Part of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo War
The Embassy Building in 2009, demolished in 2011. In 1999, the embassy was damaged by the United States.
LocationBelgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia
Coordinates44.8250°N 20.4190°E / 44.8250; 20.4190
DateMay 7, 1999
TargetDisputed
Attack type
Aerial bombing
WeaponsB-2 Spirit JDAM Bombs
Deaths3[1]
InjuredAt least 20[1]
PerpetratorsUSAF CIA

In October 1999, five months after the bombing, The Observer[lower-alpha 1] of London along with Politiken of Copenhagen, published the results of an investigation citing anonymous sources which said that the bombing had actually been deliberate as the Embassy was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.[9][10] The governments of both the U.S. and the U.K. emphatically denied it was deliberate, with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calling the story "balderdash" and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook saying there was "not a single shred of evidence" to support it.[11] In April 2000, The New York Times published the results of its own investigation for which, "the investigation produced no evidence that the bombing of the embassy had been a deliberate act."[12]

Right after the bombing, most Chinese believed it was deliberate, and many continue to believe that it was deliberate.[13] On the other hand, according to structured interviews conducted in 2002 of the 57% of Chinese Sino-American relations experts who believed that the bombing was deliberate, 87.5% did not suspect President Clinton's involvement.[14]

In August 1999, the United States agreed to compensate the victims of the bombing and their families.[15] In December 1999, the United States agreed to pay China for the damage to the embassy, and China agreed to compensate the United States for damage to U.S. property that occurred during the resulting demonstrations in China.[16][17][18]

In May 2000, a major U.S.-China trade bill passed the United States House of Representatives which became the United States–China Relations Act of 2000[19] integrating with China's entry into the World Trade Organization.[20][21][22] By June 2000, during a visit to China by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both sides said that relations between them had improved.[23]

Sequence of events

Victims of the 1999 Chinese embassy in Belgrade bombing: (from left) Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying, and Shao Yunhuan

In the days before the bombing, an attack folder labelled "Belgrade Warehouse 1" was circulated for command approval. The folder originated within the CIA and described the target as a warehouse for a Yugoslav government agency suspected of arms proliferation activities. In this form, the strike was approved by President Clinton.[24]

It is unclear whether other NATO leaders approved the strike. A report by the French Ministry of Defense after the war said that "part of the military operations were conducted by the United States outside the strict framework of NATO"[25] and that a dual-track command structure existed. NATO had no authority to use any B-2 stealth bomber, which was used to carry out the strike.[25] That the United States was running missions outside of NATO's joint command structure was a source of some contention between the U.S. and other members of NATO, especially France.[26]

According to officials interviewed by The New York Times, the target was checked against a "no-strike" database of locations such as hospitals, churches, and embassies, but this raised no alarm as the embassy was listed at its old address. Officials said a similar list in the U.K. also had the same error.[27] However, the joint Observer/Politiken investigation reported that a NATO flight controller in Naples said that on this "don't hit" map, the Chinese embassy was listed at its correct location.[28] The investigation also reported that the coordinates of the Chinese embassy were correctly listed in a NATO computer.[29]

On the night of May 7–8, the strike was carried out by a single B-2 bomber with a crew of two[30] of the United States Air Force's 509th Bomb Wing flying directly out of Whiteman AFB, Missouri. The bomber was armed with JDAM GPS-guided precision bombs accurate to 13 m (14 yd). However, the geographic coordinates provided by the CIA and programmed into the bombs were those of the Chinese embassy 440 m (480 yd) away. At around midnight local time, five bombs landed at different points on the embassy complex. The embassy had taken precautionary measures in view of the ongoing bombing campaign, sending staff home and housing others in the basement,[31] but the attack still resulted in three fatalities: Shao Yunhuan (邵云环) who worked for the Xinhua News Agency, Xu Xinghu (许杏虎) and his wife Zhu Ying (朱颖) who worked for Guangming Daily, both Chinese state media, in addition to at least 20 people injured.[1] American officials said that some or all of the three who were killed were actually intelligence agents, but the Chinese denied the claim.[32][33][34]

Chinese reaction

On May 12, to mourn the deaths of the bombing victims, American flags were ordered to be lowered to half-staff at U.S. diplomatic missions in mainland China and HKSAR. The photo above shows the lowered American flag at the American consulate in Hong Kong.[35] "The lives of those killed and injured was secondary to the escalating tensions between the two powers," states a study of the diplomatic exchanges surrounding the affair. "U.S. officials to the families of the deceased were only incidental and, at best, pro-forma."[36]
An anti-American protest in Nanjing

The raid caused a dramatic rise in tension between China and the United States. An official statement on Chinese television denounced what it called a "barbaric attack and a gross violation of Chinese sovereignty".[37] China's ambassador to the UN described what he called "NATO's barbarian act" as "a gross violation of the United Nations charter, international law and the norms governing international relations" and "a violation of the Geneva convention".[38] On May 12, 1999, the Legislative Council of Hong Kong passed the "Condemnation of NATO" motion by a rare bipartisan vote of 54-0.[39]

Large demonstrations erupted at consular offices of the United States and other NATO countries in China in reaction to news of the bombing. On May 9, 1999, then-Vice President Hu Jintao delivered a national televised speech calling the act both "criminal" and "barbaric" and that it "has greatly infuriated the Chinese people."[40][41][42] He said the unauthorized demonstrations in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenyang reflected the anger and patriotism of the Chinese people, and which the Chinese government fully supported, but urged against extreme and illegal conduct.[42][43][44]

On May 12, 1999, in his first public statement since the embassy bombing, Premier of China Zhu Rongji called NATO 'hypocrites' and stated that the "idea of safeguarding human rights and democracy, as well as opposing ethnic cleansing which they [NATO] are chanting loudly, is only a fig leaf." He also called on the United States and NATO "to make an open and official apology to the Chinese government and the Chinese people."[45]

The protests continued for several days, during which tens of thousands of rock-throwing protesters kept U.S. Ambassador James Sasser and other staff trapped in the Beijing embassy.[2][18] The residence of the U.S. Consul in Chengdu was damaged by fire and protestors tried to burn the consulate in Guangzhou. There were no reported injuries.[44]

President Clinton's apologies and those of the U.S. State Department were not initially broadcast by Chinese state-run media outlets. The demonstrations continued for four days before the Chinese government called a halt, eventually broadcasting President Clinton's apology on television and ordering the police to restrain the demonstrators.[46]

For a week, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin declined phone calls from President Bill Clinton, eventually accepting a 30-minute apology call on May 14, in which Clinton expressed "regret" over the incident.[47][48] Jiang had chosen to leave U.S.-China leadership communications channels unused as he waited for the Politburo Standing Committee to reach a consensus.[49] The time it took for the Politburo to gather necessary information and reach a decision about China's responses motivated Party leadership to revisit a proposal to establish a centralized National Security Commission, although this was ultimately not implemented at the time.[50]

Settlement

By the end of 1999, relations began to gradually improve. In August, the U.S. government made a "voluntary humanitarian payment" of $4.5 million to the families of the three Chinese nationals who were killed and to those who were injured. On December 16, 1999, the two governments reached a settlement under which the United States agreed to pay $28 million in compensation for damage to the Chinese Embassy facility, and China agreed to pay $2.87 million in compensation for damage inflicted to the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic facilities in China.[18]

Technically, although the $4.5 million paid to the victims and their families came from Department of Defense discretionary funds, the $28 million for the damage to the embassy needed to be appropriated by the United States Congress;[51][52][53] China would receive $28m in compensation from the US for the bombing, but had to give back close to $3m for the damage to US diplomatic property in Beijing and elsewhere. The US paid another $4.5m to the families of the dead and injured.[54]

Official investigation and reporting in the aftermath

Late on May 8, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen and George Tenet issued a joint press release stating neither the aircrew involved nor the equipment were to blame for the incident.[55] The first attempt to explain the bombing came on May 10. William Cohen told reporters "In simple terms, one of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map".[56] The statement made no mention of the CIA. It was subsequently revealed that the CIA possessed maps showing the embassy.[55]

While U.S. officials then began, on the record, to deflect questions pending the outcome of further enquiries, they continued to brief journalists off the record. For example, also on May 10, Eric Schmitt published an account with most of the elements that were to feature in Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Tenet's later admissions. Schmitt reported that from the grainy aerial photographs that were used the two buildings looked very similar in terms of size, shape and height, and that the distance between them is about 200 yards (180 m).[55]

Media criticism focused on the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) which made an announcement stating that "recent news reports regarding the accuracy of NIMA maps have been inaccurate or incomplete" and that "a hard-copy map is neither intended, nor used, as the sole source for target identification and approval."[57][58] CIA Director George Tenet later acknowledged that the map used should never have been used for aerial bombing target selection.[2]

Official State Department account

In June, Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering led a delegation to China to present the U.S. version of events.[59]

According to the official account, CIA analysts knew the address of the Yugoimport office to be Bulevar Umetnosti 2 (2 Boulevard of the Arts). Using this information, they attempted to pinpoint its geographic location by using the known locations and addresses of other buildings on parallel streets as reference points. (The New York Times reported that some referred to what was done as "resection and intersection"[24][lower-alpha 2] although Pickering did not use those terms in the statement.)[59]

Parallel lines were drawn from known addresses and locations on a parallel street. With this information it was attempted to reconstruct the pattern of street addresses on Bulevar Umetnosti, which was information unknown to the targeters. The pattern of street addresses on Bulevar Umetnosti was not as expected, and the targeter erroneously pinpointed the embassy "located on a small side street at some distance on Bulevar Umetnosti" from the intended target.[59]

Multiple checks designed to prevent attacks on sensitive targets each failed as the location of the embassy had not been updated since the embassy moved to New Belgrade three years earlier. As a result, the bombers took to the air with the coordinates of the Chinese embassy programmed into the bombs on board.[59]

Pickering said that they found no evidence that the embassy was being used to assist Serbian forces, and said that it is not conceivable that any rogue group within the U.S. would have done such a thing. He said that, "Science has taught us that a direct explanation, backed up by full knowledge of facts obtained through a careful investigation, is always preferable to speculation and far fetched, convoluted or contrived theories with little or no factual backing."[59]

George Tenet's statement

On July 22, George Tenet made a statement before a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.[7] Covering the same ground as Under Sec. Pickering's statement in China, he additionally acknowledged the target package originated within the CIA and that it was the sole CIA-directed strike of the war, stated that he had been personally unaware that the CIA was circulating strike requests and recognised that the CIA possessed maps correctly displaying the embassy. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, giving evidence the same day, stated that "NIMA is not at fault".[60]

Repercussions for CIA employees responsible

Tenet reprimanded six CIA officers and fired one as a result of the investigation.[61][62]

Chinese reaction

Few Chinese politicians believed the U.S. version of events, believing instead that the strike had been deliberate.[63]

Former Ambassador Li Daoyu stated "we don't say it was a decision of Clinton or the White House",[64] but the Chinese government describes the U.S. explanation for "the so-called mistaken bombing" as "anything but convincing" and has never accepted the U.S. version of events.[65]

The incident left a toxic legacy on China-NATO relations and kept them frozen for years.[66][67] In a 2011 meeting with U.S. officials in the aftermath of the 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan, Chinese general Ma Xiaotian directly referred to the embassy bombing by asking "Were you using the wrong maps again?"[66][67] Observers immediately noted the "cutting" nature of the remark, describing it as "jibing" and "priceless".[66][67][68]

The Observer/Politiken report

On October 17, 1999, The Observer[lower-alpha 1] published an article by John Sweeney, Jens Holsoe and Ed Vulliamy stating that the bombing was deliberate.[9] On the same day, Copenhagen-based publication Politiken published a similar story in Danish saying that the bombing was deliberate, claiming the Chinese were helping the Yugoslavian forces who were engaged in ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Kosovo.[69]

On November 28, 1999, The Observer published a follow-up piece stating that the Americans bombed the embassy due to allegations that the Chinese were helping Željko Ražnatović, a Serbian mobster, paramilitary leader, and indicted war criminal.[70]

In the Politiken story, a source within the British Ministry of Defense is quoted as saying that the Chinese gave permission to the Yugoslavian army to use the embassy as a communications base. The British source stated the normal practice in this case would be to contact the Chinese and to ask them to stop the activity due to its violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and that they assumed that happened but did not have specific knowledge on it.[71] Politiken also reported that British sources surmised that the Chinese did not believe NATO would dare strike the embassy.[72]

The stories drew from anonymous sources, although in instances overall position in the hierarchy, role, and location was mentioned. One non-anonymous source was Dusan Janjic, an academic and advocate for ethnic reconciliation in Yugoslavia who testified that the military attaché at the embassy, Ren Baokai, openly spoke to him about how China was spying on the U.S.[73][74]

Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State at the time, called the story that the bombing was deliberate "balderdash", and Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary at the time, said, "I know not a single shred of evidence to support this rather wild story."[2][75] The Chinese ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time, Pan Zhanlin, denied in a book that the embassy was being used for rebroadcasting by Yugoslavian forces.[76]

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) posts on lack of U.S. media coverage

On October 22, 1999, media critique group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) posted on the lack of U.S. media coverage of The Observer/Politiken report and called on its supporters to contact major newspapers to ask why it was not being covered.[77]

Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times responded along with Douglas Stanglin of USA Today, and FAIR summarized the exchanges in a post on November 3, 1999.[78] Rosenthal agreed that coverage should not have referred to the bombing as accidental when this was disputed; however, he said that the stories were not well sourced by their standards. He said that reporters were assigned to look into the matter, but that they were not yet ready to publish (about six months later, in April 2000, they did publish the results of an investigation, and it found no evidence that the bombing was deliberate).[12] In the post, and in response to Rosenthal, FAIR listed the various anonymous sources in terms of general position in the command hierarchy, location, and role and said that if they had come forward publicly they could have been court martialed. FAIR also argued that the report is consistent with other information known about the bombing such as where the bombs hit the embassy,[79][80][81] and also pointed out that The Observer/Politiken report was more widely covered internationally than in the U.S.[82][83]

Salon interview with William M. Arkin

A 2000 Salon article by Laura Rozen featured an interview of Washington Post columnist and former intelligence officer William M. Arkin, who stated his belief that the bombing was accidental. Rozen reported that the Chinese embassy and the Hotel Yugoslavia are across the street from each other, and that in the Hotel Yugoslavia, Željko Ražnatović owned a casino and had a headquarters. Both the Hotel Yugoslavia and the Chinese embassy were bombed the same night of May 7.[84][85]

Arkin told Rozen his belief that certain people at NATO erroneously believed that signals coming from the Hotel Yugoslavia were actually coming from the Chinese embassy saying, "I think there were communications emanating from the Hotel Yugoslavia across the street. And I think that stupid people who are leaking rumors to The Observer have made that mistake."[84]

Wreckage of shot down F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter

The article from The Observer in October 1999 reported that a stealth fighter had been shot down early in the air campaign and that since China lacked stealth technology, they may have been glad to trade with the Yugoslav forces.[86]

In January 2011, the Associated Press via Fox News reported that the unveiled Chinese J-20 may have been developed in part by reverse engineering the U.S. F-117 from parts of the wreckage that were recovered.[87]

In May 2019, BBC News reported that, "It's widely assumed that China did get hold of pieces of the plane to study its technology."[88]

The Sunday Times report of an unpublished memoir by Jiang Zemin

In February 2011, The Sunday Times published an article stating that an unpublished memoir by former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin recounts how Serbian forces were allowed to use the Chinese embassy, and that privately, the U.S. showed evidence of this activity to the Chinese.[89]

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) investigation

A report conducted by the ICTY entitled "Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" after the Kosovo War examined the attack on the Chinese embassy specifically and came to the conclusion that the Office of the Prosecutor should not undertake an investigation concerning the bombing.[90] In reaching its decision, it provided the following observations:

  • That the root of the failures in target location appears to stem from the land navigation techniques employed by an intelligence officer in an effort to pinpoint the location of the FDSP building at Bulevar Umetnosti 2. The officer used techniques known as "intersection" and "resection" which, while appropriate to locate distant or inaccessible points or objects, are inappropriate for use in aerial targeting as they provide only an approximate location. Using this process, the individual mistakenly determined that the Chinese Embassy was the FDSP headquarters.[91]
  • The United States has formally apologized to the Chinese Government and agreed to pay $28 million in compensation to the Chinese Government and $4.5 million to the families of those killed or injured. The CIA has also dismissed one intelligence officer and reprimanded six senior managers. The U.S. Government also claims to have taken corrective actions in order to assign individual responsibility and to prevent mistakes such as this from occurring in the future.[92]
  • The aircrew involved in the attack should not be assigned any responsibility for the fact they were given the wrong target and that it is inappropriate to attempt to assign criminal responsibility for the incident to senior leaders because they were provided with wrong information by officials of another agency.[93]

Amnesty International report

Amnesty International examined the NATO air campaign and assessed the legality of its actions.[94] In the case of the embassy bombing, Amnesty reported both on the official explanation and to the Observer/Politiken investigation without arbitrating as to which was true. NATO was criticised for continuing its bombing campaign uninterrupted when its safeguards to protect civilians were known to be faulty. A genuinely accidental attack would not imply legal responsibility, but the report stated that "the very basic information needed to prevent this mistake was publicly and widely available at the time" and that, "It would appear that NATO failed to take the necessary precautions required by Article 57(2) of Protocol I."[95] Article 57(2) of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions says that an attacker shall, "do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects."[96]

Aftermath

Future of the location

Marking the 10th anniversary of the bombing on May 7, 2009, Belgrade Mayor Dragan Đilas and Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Wei Jinghua dedicated a commemorative plaque at the location. The author of the plaque was Nikola Kolja Milunović.[97] Wreaths were laid at the plaque on May 7, 2017, and also in September 2019.[98][99]

During the visit of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping to Serbia in June 2016, he and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić visited the location, declared the nearby turnaround a Square of Serbian-Chinese Friendship and announced the construction of the Chinese Cultural Center on the location of the former embassy.[2][100][101] The construction of the center began on July 20, 2017, in the presence of Mayor Siniša Mali and Chinese Ambassador Li Manchang. The center will have ten floors, two below ground and eight above, with a total floor area measuring 32,000 m2 (340,000 sq ft). The project will cost 45 million euros.[102][103][2]

In 2020, the Milunović plaque was replaced by a new, "modest" square memorial. While the inscription on the original plaque explained why it had been placed there and included the date of the bombing and number of victims, the new one has a generic text in Serbian and Chinese: As a token of gratitude to PR China for support and friendship in hardest moments for the people of the Republic of Serbia, and in memory of the killed. This sparked objections by the Belgraders, who called the new memorial "a shame" and a "table which says nothing", asking for the reinstatement of the old plaque.[104]

Rise of anti-Western sentiment and warming of China-Russia relations

Within the United Nations, both China and Russia opposed military action against Yugoslavia.[105] Strong cultural ties exist between Russia and Serbia, and the bombing campaign, along with the bombing of the Chinese embassy, led to an increase in anti-Western sentiment in both countries and a warming of China-Russia relations.[106][107][108]

See also

Notes

  1. Note that the story actually appears on The Guardian's website (www.theguardian.com). The Observer is published on Sundays and The Guardian is published daily and both are sister publications owned by Guardian Media Group.
  2. In activities such as surveying and inshore marine navigation intersection refers to finding one's current location by taking bearings from known locations. For example, while in a boat finding the bearing of a lighthouse, and other locations known on a map to find where one is on the water. Resection refers to finding the location of an unknown distant point by taking bearings to it from known locations. One bearing determines a line, and two bearings determine two lines which then intersect at a point. A third bearing can be taken which ought to intersect at or very close to where the first two lines intersect. See Position resection and intersection. However, generally speaking, these terms refer to the use of bearings rather than street addresses.

References

  1. Ponniah, Kevin; Marinkovic, Lazara (May 7, 2019). "The night the US bombed a Chinese embassy". BBC News. Retrieved October 12, 2021. In total, three people were killed and at least 20 injured.
  2. Ponniah, Kevin; Marinkovic, Lazara (May 7, 2019). "The night the US bombed a Chinese embassy". BBC News. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
  3. "CNN - Clinton apologizes to China over embassy bombing - May 10, 1999". CNN. May 10, 1999. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
  4. "Youth Violence and Embassy Bombing Apology | C-SPAN.org". C-SPAN. May 10, 1999. Retrieved October 12, 2021. Begin time: 00:34 End time: 01:54
  5. Dumbaugh, Kerry (April 12, 2000). "Chinese Embassy Bombing in Belgrade: Compensation Issues". EveryCRSReport.com. Archived from the original on October 28, 2021. Retrieved December 21, 2021. U.S. officials offered a number of apologies for the attack...May 10, 1999 – President Clinton, in opening remarks at a White House strategy meeting on children and violence, began with "I would like to say a word about the tragic bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. I have already expressed our apology and our condolences to President Jiang and to the Chinese people...."
  6. Schmitt, Eric (July 23, 1999). "In a Fatal Error, C.I.A. Picked a Bombing Target Only Once: The Chinese Embassy". New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2009.
  7. Tenet, George (July 22, 1999). "DCI Statement on the Belgrade Chinese Embassy Bombing House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing". Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on June 13, 2007. Retrieved October 4, 2006.
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  9. Vulliamy, Ed; Holsoe, Jens; Vulliamy, Ed (October 17, 1999). "Nato bombed Chinese deliberately". The Observer. London.
  10. Holsøe, Jens; Larsen, Jørgen; Leijonhufvud, Göran (October 17, 1999). "Kina hjalp Jugoslavien" [China helped Yugoslavia]. Politiken (in Danish). pp. 1, 10.
  11. Ponniah, Kevin; Marinkovic, Lazara (May 7, 2019). "The night the US bombed a Chinese embassy". BBC News. Retrieved October 12, 2021. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright decried the story as "balderdash", while British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said there was "not a single shred of evidence" to support it.
  12. Steven Lee Myers (April 17, 2000). "Chinese Embassy Bombing: A Wide Net of Blame". New York Times. New York. Retrieved October 18, 2021. While the investigation produced no evidence that the bombing of the embassy had been a deliberate act, it provided a detailed account of a broader set of missteps than the United States or NATO have acknowledged...All of the officials interviewed by the Times said they knew of no evidence to support the assertion, and none has been produced.
  13. Moore, Gregory J. (2010). "Not Very Material but Hardly Immaterial: China's Bombed Embassy and Sino-American Relations". Foreign Policy Analysis. 6 (1): 23–41. doi:10.1111/j.1743-8594.2009.00100.x. ISSN 1743-8586. JSTOR 24909876. Of the 57% of the Chinese experts who believed the bombing was intentional, 87.5% believed President Clinton had no motives to do it and consequently they did not suspect his involvement. Preprint version of the content of the published paper publicly available via SSRN.
  14. Chu, Henry (July 31, 1999). "U.S. to Pay $4.5 Million for Bombing of Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved December 21, 2021.
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  23. Steven Lee Myers (April 17, 2000). "Chinese Embassy Bombing: A Wide Net of Blame". New York Times. New York. Retrieved October 18, 2021.
  24. Whitney, Craig (November 11, 1999). "U.S. Military Acted Outside NATO Framework During Kosovo Conflict, France Says". New York Times. Retrieved October 19, 2021.
  25. "Truth behind America's raid on Belgrade". The Observer. London. November 27, 1999. Retrieved October 19, 2021.
  26. Steven Lee Myers (April 17, 2000). "Chinese Embassy Bombing: A Wide Net of Blame". New York Times. New York. Retrieved October 18, 2021. According to the officials interviewed by The Times, American commanders in Europe did maintain such a list of buildings, like hospitals, churches and embassies. The Chinese Embassy was on that list, officials said, but at its old address and was not removed. They said the embassy was also listed at the wrong address on a similar list in Britain.
  27. Vulliamy, Ed; Sweeney, John (October 17, 1999). "Nato bombed Chinese deliberately". The Guardian. London. Retrieved December 15, 2021. A Nato flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of 'non-targets': churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this 'don't hit' map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO.
  28. "Truth behind America's raid on Belgrade". The Observer. London. November 28, 1999. Retrieved October 18, 2021. In the immediate aftermath of the attack there were some among non-US staff who were suspicious. On 8 May they tapped into the Nato target computer and checked out the satellite co-ordinates for the Chinese Embassy. The co-ordinates were in the computer and they were correct. While the world was being told the CIA had used out-of-date maps, Nato's officers were looking at evidence that the CIA was bang on target.
  29. Diamond, John (2008). The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the end of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq. Stanford University Press. p. 332. ISBN 978-0-8047-5601-3. In the predawn hours of May 7, 1999, a single B-2 "Spirit" bomber took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri for the fifteen-hour flight to Belgrade. The highly trained two-member crew,...
  30. Diamond, John (2008). The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the end of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq. Stanford University Press. pp. 330–332. ISBN 978-0-8047-5601-3.
  31. Vulliamy, Ed; Sweeney, John (October 17, 1999). "Nato bombed Chinese deliberately". The Guardian. London. Retrieved December 15, 2021. Only three people died in the attack, two of whom were, reportedly, not journalists - the official Chinese version - but intelligence officers.
  32. Diamond, John (2008). The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the end of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq. Stanford University Press. p. 332. ISBN 978-0-8047-5601-3. U.S. officials later suggested privately that at least two of the three victims were actually intelligence officers, a claim the Chinese denied.
  33. Steven Lee Myers (April 17, 2000). "Chinese Embassy Bombing: A Wide Net of Blame". New York Times. New York. Retrieved October 18, 2021. The officials said that after the bombing they did learn a great deal about the embassy's intelligence operations, including the background of the three Chinese journalists who were killed and who American officials say were in fact intelligence agents.
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  68. "Truth behind America's raid on Belgrade". The Observer. London. November 27, 1999. Retrieved October 19, 2021. The true story - though it is being denied by everyone from Albright, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and CIA director George Tenet down - is that the Americans knew exactly what they are doing. The Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was deliberately targeted by the most precise weapons in the US arsenal because it was being used by Zeljko Raznatovic, the indicted war criminal better known as Arkan, to transmit messages to his `Tigers' - Serb death squads - in Kosovo...that it was an operating base for Arkan, an indicted war criminal, was something that convinced the Americans to strike.'
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  70. Holsøe, Jens; Larsen, Jørgen; Leijonhufvud, Göran (October 17, 1999). "Kina hjalp Jugoslavien" [China helped Yugoslavia]. Politiken (in Danish). pp. 1, 10. Kineserne har, siger britiske kilder, sikkert regnet med, at NATO ikke ville vove at bombe ambassaden. (article is available in the Politiken archive accessible with a subscription in image format, but not copyable text)
  71. Ponniah, Kevin; Marinkovic, Lazara (May 7, 2019). "The night the US bombed a Chinese embassy". BBC News. Retrieved October 12, 2021. On the day of the bombing, Dusan Janjic, an academic and advocate for ethnic reconciliation in Yugoslavia, was having lunch at an upscale restaurant in central Belgrade with a man he considered a good friend. Ren Baokai was the military attaché at the Chinese embassy and Janjic said he was surprisingly open with him about the fact that China was spying on Nato and US operations and tracking warplanes from its Belgrade outpost..
  72. Vulliamy, Ed; Holsoe, Jens; Vulliamy, Ed (October 17, 1999). "Nato bombed Chinese deliberately". The Guardian. London. Retrieved December 15, 2021. The Chinese military attache, Ven Bo Koy, who was seriously wounded in the attack and is now in hospital in China, told Dusan Janjic, the respected president of Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade, only hours before the attack, that the embassy was monitoring incoming cruise missiles in order to develop counter-measures.
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    • Deng, Yong (April 28, 2008). China's Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-1-139-47103-9. Retrieved November 1, 2021 via Google Books. Perhaps the most serious interest in a separate global grouping surfaced in the aftermath of the NATO air war against Yugoslavia and the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999. For a brief period, China and Russia did step up military ties, but the drive for an exclusive alliance proved to be feeble and short-lived.
    • The book is also available at no cost after registration on Internet Archive:
    • Deng, Yong (2008). China's Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations. Internet Archive. Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-521-88666-6.
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