It was hard to find anyone in Beijing yesterday who wasn't outraged by the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. "America is a big bully," said a hairdresser in a typical angry comment. "They say - listen to me and I give you a carrot; if you don't, I hit you with a stick."
Passers-by expressed similar views.
"China should send money and missiles to Yugoslavia," fumed a young executive, who said he was normally a critic of the Beijing government but yesterday was fully in tune with the People's Daily, which accused NATO of "brazenly and brutally trampling" on the United Nations Charter.
The official media in China have not reported the complexities of the Kosovo situation, or the savage violence of Yugoslav military forces against the people of Kosovo. But popular reaction seemed to stem from latent anti-Americanism and a warm feeling for Yugoslavia due to a shared historical experience.
In the last two decades in particular, the Chinese saw Yugoslavia as a fellow socialist country struggling with the need to cope with capitalism. "People also see a parallel with the Korean peninsula," said a Chinese analyst. "They remember how the Americans attacked the Korean communists."
Several Chinese people interviewed in the street or by telephone all confirmed that there is a real surge of anti-US anger in Beijing. Some praised Russia for its stand against the US, underlining the fact that the air strikes have also sparked an anti-American alliance between the two powers. Moscow and Beijing are already finding common cause in opposing a planned US anti-missile shield covering Japan and South Korea and in supplying each other with arms.
The language used by the Chinese authorities yesterday to condemn the United States and its NATO allies focused on the assertion that countries had the right to deal with minorities without interference. This is a touchy subject in China, which has been accused by human rights groups in the West of repressing Tibet. Beijing regards Tibet and Taiwan as provinces of China, in the same way as Belgrade claims Kosovo to be an integral part of Yugoslavia, and is struggling with an independence movement in the north-western Muslim region of Xinjiang.
"The issue of Kosovo is the internal affair of Yugoslavia and the necessary measures taken by the government of Yugoslavia are proper and legal," the People's Daily said. It pointed out that there were 200 countries in the world with more than 2,500 ethnic groups and that encouraging "splittist" groups would leave the world "in a muddle". NATO, it said, wanted to take advantage of the Kosovo situation to control the Balkans and expand eastwards.
Like Russia, China perceives the US to be trying to secure a global hegemonic position as the world's policeman, and fears that the Western powers are trying to change the nature of the international order.
However, the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Zhu Rongji, will not postpone a planned trip to Washington as did Russian Prime Minister Mr Yevgeny Primakov, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. A Chinese observer explained: "To cancel it might send too strong a signal. China expects a lot from its relationship with the United States, including membership of the World Trade Organisation, and doesn't want to `add snow to frost', i.e. make matters worse."
President Jiang Zemin set the tone shortly after NATO carried out its threats to bomb Yugoslav military targets. Violence did not resolve problems, indeed, it made them more complex, he said in Milan at the end of a five-day visit to Italy. The Foreign Ministry said yesterday that China "strongly demands an immediate halt to the surprise military action against Yugoslavia".
Reading from a statement, spokesman Mr Sun Yuxi said: "Without the authorisation of the UN Security Council, the military action against Yugoslavia is a serious violation of the UN. It is unacceptable to the international community. The right of each country to voluntarily choose its path of development should be respected."
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan and Malaysia expressed support for NATO air strikes.