Long Debate over the US Challenge } 647
interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country, an ex-communist
one to boot.
The Western nations turned first to the Security Council for authoriza-
tion of armed enforcement action. Chinese and Russian objections blocked
that route. From Beijing’s perspective, Kosovo was part of the FRY, a state
recognized by the international community, and whatever was happening
there, however unfortunate it might be, was an internal affair of that coun-
try. The Security Council should not become a mechanism for Western in-
terference in the internal affairs of other countries, China’s representatives
at the UN said. The fact that Yugoslavia was a former socialist state and
still ruled by ex-communist apparatchiks was not lost on Chinese leaders.
Socialist states seemed to be especially vulnerable to Western military in-
tervention. Rather than acquiesce to Chinese and Russian objections and
let the killing in Kosovo continue, the Western countries turned to NATO
and acted outside the UN framework. In mid-March 1999, NATO war-
planes, mostly American, began bombing targets in the FRY in an effort
to force Milošević to halt the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. This added a fur-
ther threatening element to the picture as seen from Beijing. The armed in-
tervention in Kosovo was NATO’s first-ever collective use of NATO forces
under a NATO command, and it was happening in a state that was not a
member of the NATO treaty. Moreover, the action was not directed toward
defeating external aggression but toward rearranging the internal affairs of
a non-NATO, ex-socialist state.
China’s media did not inform China’s people of the genocide and ethnic
cleansing underway in Kosovo. Nor did it inform them of the considerations
of the European nations about maintaining a regime of peace in Europe. It
informed them merely that NATO warplanes were attacking the FRY without
UN Security Council authorization and with devastating effect. The Western
countries, led by the United States, were intervening militarily in the internal
affairs of a small country yet again, and over China’s principled objections,
to impose Western notions of proper conduct. The instrument of this bla-
tant aggression was NATO, which was apparently being transformed into a
worldwide, aggressive military alliance, or so China’s public was informed by
its media.
Further apparent US insult to China came in April 1999, when Clinton
turned down a set of far-reaching proposals by Premier Zhu Rongji designed
to open the way to a PRC-US deal over China’s entry into the WTO. Ever since
the WTO was formed in 1995, Washington had insisted on market-opening
measures far beyond what Beijing was prepared to accept. Premier Zhu Rongji
responded in 1999 to US demands with market-opening proposals for agri-
culture, financial services, telecommunications, and other areas. There had
been strong opposition to Zhu’s proposals within China from vested indus-
trial interests. But with backing from Jiang Zemin, Zhu was able to get his