In the early hours of the 8th of May, 1999, NATO pilots hit the Chinese Embassy with precision-guided bombs-- a disastrous accident. NATO claimed their pilots had mistaken the embassy for a legitimate military target. The reactions in Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guanghzou were dramatic. BBC reported that "major cities in China have seen their biggest and angriest demonstrations for years in response to the NATO destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with the loss of four lives...."
In Beijing about 100,000 people invaded the embassy district, massing on streets littered with rocks and broken bottles from earlier protests. Buses packed with students headed out of campuses across the city. Correspondents claimed the authorities appeared to be deliberately encouraging the action. Front-page pictures of the victims were on all the newspapers. At an emergency session of the UN Security Council in New York, the Chinese ambassador accused NATO of committing a war crime.
A few weeks later, in the Dordogne...
