Embassy Bombing Fuels Anti-U.S. Propaganda

The allied bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade has provided Beijing with a powerful propaganda tool, at least for domestic consumption, to counteract the sensational allegations contained in a congressional report on Chinese espionage activities in the United States.

Among the allegations in the report from a nine-member congressional committee chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), which is set for release today in Washington, are charges that China maintains a massive espionage network that has helped it develop thermonuclear weapons sooner than otherwise would have been possible.

But stories in the Chinese press and statements from government officials in Beijing portray the Cox report as part of a campaign by Washington to steer the subject away from the bombing by a North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplane in the Yugoslav capital, which killed three Chinese journalists and injured 20 other embassy employees.

The bombing sparked several days of massive, sometimes violent, demonstrations outside U.S. diplomatic missions across China.

“The United States, by fabricating stories about China’s ‘nuclear espionage’ and ‘political donations,’ is fomenting an anti-China attitude and a ‘China threat’ theory, and diverting people’s attention away from the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade,” a reporter wrote in the official China Daily newspaper.

The timing of the Belgrade bombing, coming only two weeks before the planned release of the long-anticipated Cox report, allowed the Chinese government to take the offensive on the report as well as continuing congressional inquiries into campaign fund-raising.

“Beijing’s spin,” said Bob Broadfoot, managing director of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, “will be to highlight that the United States is really not trustworthy.”

Although such a campaign has little resonance in the United States or Europe, it plays well to increasingly nationalistic and isolationist sentiments inside China. Despite U.S. and NATO assertions that the bombing was accidental, blaming it on an inaccurate map, many in China are convinced that it was intentional.

“The Beijing leadership is playing off the growing anti-U.S. sentiment,” one Asia-based security analyst said. “Because the Cox report comes after the Belgrade bombing, they can present it as a continuation of anti-China scapegoating.”

Regional security analysts also expect Beijing to counter some of the espionage charges in the Cox report with claims of U.S. spy activities in China. There is a century-long tradition of American intelligence activities in that country.