Hi folks, This week has been one of the slower ones, with not much happening. I will stick with writing at least once a week, but if not much happens for me to do a proper weekly review, and if I also have no time to write those big essays, I will simply write this kind of “short takes”.
Interesting, I was really taken aback when a Chinese friend said the bomb hitting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was intentional. This is very much not a mainstream view in the West, even from papers such as the Guardian. It's very counterintuitive because the cost-benefit makes no sense at all from the US/NATO side. So I think most people here would not understand the level of the Chinese reaction, or the significance in memory. That said, the Xi state visit to Serbia didn't seem to seek to antagonize or relitigate, at least from the reporting I saw.
Serbia seems to be in an interesting place at the moment. Perhaps very quietly edging away from Russia and towards the EU. With the intention of being like Hungary, unaligned and playing all sides.
I don’t have special insights about 1999. But I think the cost benefits analysis then would be different from the same analysis of today. In 1999, China was really a nobody, so an intentional decision would not be implausible to me. It’s also very possible that a decision was only at some tactical/ technical level. it’s quite impossible to involve a decision from the White House but quite possible a decision from operating theatre. That’s because, China was nobody then. And this “nobody-ness” was what many nationalistic sentiment in China was all about.
Kind of that they would have been more careful if it were their own embassy and people. Or indeed if it were China today. That makes sense. I seem to recall in that war there were also a number of incidents of bombing accidently hitting civilian rather than military targets, especially a convoy on a bridge. I should also admit that I have extra sympathy with NATO in this conflict as my school in Scotland was the recipient of Kosovan refugees. They stayed for 2 years but did get to go home.
The idea that China was a “nobody” in 1999 is also not mainstream here. The idea of Chinese military intervention in East Asia was taken seriously throughout the Cold War after Korea, and defense policymakers would have been familiar with Chinese support of mujahideen in Afghanistan and other guerrilla movements.
Economically, by the late 1990s Chinese manufactured goods were ubiquitous here along with worries about job losses to cheaper competitors.
Certainly China is more powerful now, but 1999 China was not someone to be overlooked.
A comment here by a subscriber illustrates my point: “Finally, the embassy incident is something that had entirely escaped my notice until now, which is understandable considering that I don't think it got more than a day's coverage in the US when it happened”
I appreciate the name explanation. I love wordplay, even moreso when it crosses languages, but I'm years away from getting any of these references on my own in Chinese. (Currently, I can't understand anything more complicated than 我的猫吃饭, and if I say that out loud I'll botch all the tones. It's rewarding to have even gotten that far, honestly.)
Neither "Lost in Translation" nor "Lost in Nanjing" really conveys what you're doing here, but frankly I don't think that matters. No one that I follow on Substack has a name that does more than hint at the content of their project, so I don't think you need to either. If it were your only focus, perhaps you'd be better served thinking more about SEO (to drive more traffic here), but as a side project, I say you should please yourself first, and we readers will figure it out.
(I find that the Android app behaves sluggishly when my comments get too long, so I sometimes make a mini-thread if I have a lot to say.)
Regarding payment, I'm currently managing my expenses very carefully, so as much as I enjoy your work, I will not be paying for it any time soon (this is true for everyone I read on Substack, please don't take it personally). I will continue to read whatever free content is available here and at Baiguan, but I do not begrudge anyone the right to seek compensation for time and effort invested. Writing is work, even if you do it for fun!
Finally, the embassy incident is something that had entirely escaped my notice until now, which is understandable considering that I don't think it got more than a day's coverage in the US when it happened (curious if any of my fellow Americans remember hearing about it then). I'm certainly not in a position to say if it was deliberate or not, although it wouldn't surprise me if it were. It's interesting how different perspectives can put an event into national consciousness or omit it entirely; my major childhood news memory is the Iran-Contra hearings, which I'm sure the rest of the world doesn't remember at all.
Oh, and one more thing: I'm fascinated by the idea of connecting yourself (as a Nanjinger) to a history that spans centuries. I simply can't do that as an American, partly because all of my ancestors came here on a boat at some point, and partly because the shared history of this land doesn't go back very far, even if there were people here well before the US existed. Where I live, there are a few historical buildings that predate the founding of the US, which is amazing but relatively unusual as well.
Yes the movie symbolizes "the futility of cross-cultural understanding" in the broad sense. This idea seems to the antithesis to your aim. If you turn your newsletter title on its head it becomes Found in Translation or perhaps China Translated - the way I personally think about your work. Just a thought, from your tong xue :)
I really appreciate your "translation" of Xi's visit to Serbia and the significance of the embassy bombing to the Chinese public. Yes, you are a valuable "translator" for many of us not so fortunate to be proud Nanjingers.
Hi Robert! You need to continue thinking about the name issue. Lost in Translation is a great name but it's destroying your branding prospects. "Global Village Whisperer" goes along with your anti-noise and global understanding emphases.
"China's Belgrade embassy was the only target the CIA provided in the course of the war," says CIA Director George Tenet. C.I.A. Says Chinese Embassy Bombing Resulted From Its Sole Attempt to Pick Targets. By Eric Schmitt. Nato bombed Chinese deliberately. Sun 17 Oct 1999 03.23 BST. NYT. July 23, 1999
According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.
The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.
The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.
In the NYT article cited, the CIA admits to giving the target coordinates, nut claims that the bombing of the Chinese embassy was an accident. They claim they were attempting to target Yugoslav government arms agency.
"At the C.I.A., analysts had long suspected that the headquarters of a Yugoslav arms agency was financing the Yugoslav military by selling advanced technology to rogue nations, and jumped at the chance to destroy a stubborn nemesis."
> Later, a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'.
> A Nato flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of 'non-targets': churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this 'don't hit' map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO.
No name suggestion but a marketing suggestion. I'm retired now, and in Canada, so I mostly read you and your sister reports as mental stimulation and to keep abreast of China in areas that most media miss(ie: I have a limited budget and can't buy everything I like). The good thing about old mass media was by providing critical mass it could attract advertising, but that was it's greatest weakness as well, lack of editorial independence. Maybe your group can combine all your newsletters into a flaghead, charge one price for access then use views, comments or other participation to share out the revenue. This would also help with the rising tide lifts all boats, while you can also use the flaghead to attract more voices, a sort of virtuous cycle.
Something tells me Bloomberg would have a different style of headline than "Xi Says China Will ‘Never Forget’ the US Bombing of Its Embassy" if it was a US embassy. I look forward to the "President X Pays Remembrance to Benghazi" if a US president ever goes to Libya
Also, if you have better name suggestions, let me know!
Interesting, I was really taken aback when a Chinese friend said the bomb hitting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was intentional. This is very much not a mainstream view in the West, even from papers such as the Guardian. It's very counterintuitive because the cost-benefit makes no sense at all from the US/NATO side. So I think most people here would not understand the level of the Chinese reaction, or the significance in memory. That said, the Xi state visit to Serbia didn't seem to seek to antagonize or relitigate, at least from the reporting I saw.
Serbia seems to be in an interesting place at the moment. Perhaps very quietly edging away from Russia and towards the EU. With the intention of being like Hungary, unaligned and playing all sides.
I don’t have special insights about 1999. But I think the cost benefits analysis then would be different from the same analysis of today. In 1999, China was really a nobody, so an intentional decision would not be implausible to me. It’s also very possible that a decision was only at some tactical/ technical level. it’s quite impossible to involve a decision from the White House but quite possible a decision from operating theatre. That’s because, China was nobody then. And this “nobody-ness” was what many nationalistic sentiment in China was all about.
Kind of that they would have been more careful if it were their own embassy and people. Or indeed if it were China today. That makes sense. I seem to recall in that war there were also a number of incidents of bombing accidently hitting civilian rather than military targets, especially a convoy on a bridge. I should also admit that I have extra sympathy with NATO in this conflict as my school in Scotland was the recipient of Kosovan refugees. They stayed for 2 years but did get to go home.
For someone with no special inside knowledge about this event, this is the most plausible explanation I can come up with
The idea that China was a “nobody” in 1999 is also not mainstream here. The idea of Chinese military intervention in East Asia was taken seriously throughout the Cold War after Korea, and defense policymakers would have been familiar with Chinese support of mujahideen in Afghanistan and other guerrilla movements.
Economically, by the late 1990s Chinese manufactured goods were ubiquitous here along with worries about job losses to cheaper competitors.
Certainly China is more powerful now, but 1999 China was not someone to be overlooked.
A comment here by a subscriber illustrates my point: “Finally, the embassy incident is something that had entirely escaped my notice until now, which is understandable considering that I don't think it got more than a day's coverage in the US when it happened”
I appreciate the name explanation. I love wordplay, even moreso when it crosses languages, but I'm years away from getting any of these references on my own in Chinese. (Currently, I can't understand anything more complicated than 我的猫吃饭, and if I say that out loud I'll botch all the tones. It's rewarding to have even gotten that far, honestly.)
Neither "Lost in Translation" nor "Lost in Nanjing" really conveys what you're doing here, but frankly I don't think that matters. No one that I follow on Substack has a name that does more than hint at the content of their project, so I don't think you need to either. If it were your only focus, perhaps you'd be better served thinking more about SEO (to drive more traffic here), but as a side project, I say you should please yourself first, and we readers will figure it out.
(I find that the Android app behaves sluggishly when my comments get too long, so I sometimes make a mini-thread if I have a lot to say.)
Regarding payment, I'm currently managing my expenses very carefully, so as much as I enjoy your work, I will not be paying for it any time soon (this is true for everyone I read on Substack, please don't take it personally). I will continue to read whatever free content is available here and at Baiguan, but I do not begrudge anyone the right to seek compensation for time and effort invested. Writing is work, even if you do it for fun!
Finally, the embassy incident is something that had entirely escaped my notice until now, which is understandable considering that I don't think it got more than a day's coverage in the US when it happened (curious if any of my fellow Americans remember hearing about it then). I'm certainly not in a position to say if it was deliberate or not, although it wouldn't surprise me if it were. It's interesting how different perspectives can put an event into national consciousness or omit it entirely; my major childhood news memory is the Iran-Contra hearings, which I'm sure the rest of the world doesn't remember at all.
Oh, and one more thing: I'm fascinated by the idea of connecting yourself (as a Nanjinger) to a history that spans centuries. I simply can't do that as an American, partly because all of my ancestors came here on a boat at some point, and partly because the shared history of this land doesn't go back very far, even if there were people here well before the US existed. Where I live, there are a few historical buildings that predate the founding of the US, which is amazing but relatively unusual as well.
hey, i love each and every one of your comments!
Yes the movie symbolizes "the futility of cross-cultural understanding" in the broad sense. This idea seems to the antithesis to your aim. If you turn your newsletter title on its head it becomes Found in Translation or perhaps China Translated - the way I personally think about your work. Just a thought, from your tong xue :)
I really appreciate your "translation" of Xi's visit to Serbia and the significance of the embassy bombing to the Chinese public. Yes, you are a valuable "translator" for many of us not so fortunate to be proud Nanjingers.
Well written as usual! And thats an interesting factoid re the meaning “Jing” and only two cities having it
I am a proud Nanjinger!
Hi Robert! You need to continue thinking about the name issue. Lost in Translation is a great name but it's destroying your branding prospects. "Global Village Whisperer" goes along with your anti-noise and global understanding emphases.
Hmm...seems like many people would rather prefer the current name. Why?
Lost in Nanjing sounds a little bit too much like a travel blog to me
"China's Belgrade embassy was the only target the CIA provided in the course of the war," says CIA Director George Tenet. C.I.A. Says Chinese Embassy Bombing Resulted From Its Sole Attempt to Pick Targets. By Eric Schmitt. Nato bombed Chinese deliberately. Sun 17 Oct 1999 03.23 BST. NYT. July 23, 1999
According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.
The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.
The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.
In the NYT article cited, the CIA admits to giving the target coordinates, nut claims that the bombing of the Chinese embassy was an accident. They claim they were attempting to target Yugoslav government arms agency.
"At the C.I.A., analysts had long suspected that the headquarters of a Yugoslav arms agency was financing the Yugoslav military by selling advanced technology to rogue nations, and jumped at the chance to destroy a stubborn nemesis."
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/23/world/cia-says-chinese-embassy-bombing-resulted-from-its-sole-attempt-to-pick-targets.html
If you can provide other links to credible sources, I would appreciate it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans
> Later, a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'.
> A Nato flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of 'non-targets': churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this 'don't hit' map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO.
No name suggestion but a marketing suggestion. I'm retired now, and in Canada, so I mostly read you and your sister reports as mental stimulation and to keep abreast of China in areas that most media miss(ie: I have a limited budget and can't buy everything I like). The good thing about old mass media was by providing critical mass it could attract advertising, but that was it's greatest weakness as well, lack of editorial independence. Maybe your group can combine all your newsletters into a flaghead, charge one price for access then use views, comments or other participation to share out the revenue. This would also help with the rising tide lifts all boats, while you can also use the flaghead to attract more voices, a sort of virtuous cycle.
Something tells me Bloomberg would have a different style of headline than "Xi Says China Will ‘Never Forget’ the US Bombing of Its Embassy" if it was a US embassy. I look forward to the "President X Pays Remembrance to Benghazi" if a US president ever goes to Libya