The official media in China have made an onslaught on the Western press for alleged bias in its reporting of the NATO conflict with Yugoslavia. The Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, said the US media were guilty of hypocrisy for accusing Beijing of "fanning anti-American feeling" after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
"It is really the US media pouring oil on the fire and fanning the intentions of the American masses against China," the newspaper said. It stated that anti-NATO demonstrations by Chinese people in Taiwan and the United States were staged because people were "intensely angry" at the embassy bombing, not because they were aroused by the Chinese media.
In support of the official campaign against the Western media, the English-language China Daily published a letter from the Australian journalist and author John Pilger on Monday, in which he alleged that the impression of a series of NATO "blunders" was false.
"Anyone scrutinising the unpublished list of targets hit by NATO is left with little doubt that a deliberate terror campaign is being waged against the civilian population of Yugoslavia," claimed Mr Pilger, who predicted "blanket bombing by B-52s this week". He also alleged that NATO was suffering serious losses.
"Reliable alternative sources in Washington have counted up to 38 aircraft crashed or shot down, and an undisclosed number of American and British special forces killed. This is suppressed, of course."
The official Chinese media have published almost nothing about the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and refer to people fleeing from Kosovo as refugees from NATO bombing. Without exception the Beijing newspapers describe the NATO bombing of its embassy as a deliberate act, and publish daily conspiracy theories on why "US-led NATO" would do such a thing.
The conclusion of military experts is unanimous. The bombing of the embassy "was a prepared, planned, targeted attack, an act of war," said Prof Zhang Zhaozhong of the National Defence University in a typical commentary. Three Chinese journalists were killed and 20 people injured in the May 7th NATO strike on the Chinese embassy. The People's Daily yesterday carried a full page of anti-NATO cartoons and poems sent in by readers.
One cartoon shows the Statue of Liberty as a ghoulish American predator grasping the globe. Another portrays a dagger-wielding United States leading NATO members toward a building labelled "the house of sovereign rights" and yelling, "Blast this house today, split it up and make it collapse".
Another cartoon sent in by 14-year-old Cui Honglin showed the Chinese mission in Belgrade as a dove of peace holding an olive branch while three US bombs plummeted towards it.