In Tokyo, Chinese embassy bombing debate still rages

By Edward Neilan
Special to World Tribune.com

TOKYO--Just off the front pages here, the debate is still raging over whether NATO bombs which hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade last month were aimed by mistake or on purpose.

"The bombing of the Chinese Embassy was not a mistake," a former leading officer of the Japanese self-defense force said across a luncheon table.

Without saying where he acquired such controversial information, the retired officer added "intelligence maps clearly show the embassy, not a vacant field."

Ezra Vogel, the Harvard professor who shocked everyone with his "Japan As No. 1" book back in 1979, spoke at another Tokyo forum the next day and had a different take:

"I find it hard to believe that anyone would consciously do such a thing and certainly not as a matter of policy. On the other hand I don't find it hard to believe that a massive mistake happened with a series of pitfalls and miscues adding up to disaster. Our military machine is usually awesome and precise but it is also capable of huge blunders once in awhile."

A friend of mine at a Chinese think tank in Shanghai checked in by email:

"Of course, the U.S . bombing was by no means Clinton administration policy. But it was not a 'mistake'. It could have been done by some 'rogue' officials of CIA and defense intelligence." The argument is ready-made for academics with an axe to grind. Some Asians are ready to accept any negative point about the U.S. to soften real or imagined hurts of the past.

It is traditional communist tactics to build a straw man for negotiating purposes.

In the background, we have from diplomatic sources that the Chinese military is very impressed, not with U.S. inaccuracy in the embassy bombing, but with the generally high rate of U.S. missile and bombing accuracy.

"Overall, there were very few missiles and bombs that missed their targets," said one diplomatic analyst. "The Chinese are impressed. Kosovo has shown them again how far behind they are."

U.S. presidential special envoy and undersecretary of state, Thomas Pickering, went to Beijing and submitted to the Chinese government a report on the results of investigation into the May 7 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. He also met Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Deputy Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, and he explained in detail the main points of the report. However, the report's conclusion of "tragic mistaken bombing" was not accepted by the Chinese side. The Chinese side refuted the U.S. side's argument point by point, saying that the U.S. side's explanation neither "conforms to logic" nor "holds water."

In the meantime, Chinese experts stressed that the U.S. investigation report is unconvincing. Tao Wenzhao, deputy director of the U.S. Problem Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "The investigation report brought to Beijing by Pickering is neither satisfactory nor convincing. The explanation on using an old map was provided long ago. At that time I already said this was very absurd. How could they use a 1992 map to guide 1999 military operations? This is absolutely unbelievable. The US National Imagery and Mapping Agency not long ago pointed out that the map drawn by the agency indicates the location of the Chinese embassy." The Chinese response to the whole affair, from intensive staged demonstrations to the repeated insistence that the bombing could not have been a mistake, gives us an insight into this particular Chinese mindset on crisis management.

The Sino-U.S. relationship is worth preserving, no doubt. But it is also a "learn as we go" proposition.

Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.