By John Pomfret and Michael Laris
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 12, 1999; Page A24

BEIJING, May 11 – The most remarkable thing about the protests that have erupted across China over the last four days is that the great majority of China's best and brightest, from software engineers to academics to businessmen, believe deeply that the United States planned to destroy their embassy in Belgrade.

Millions more people in the world's most populous country seem convinced that the United States is out to get them. From posters around the campus of Beijing University to headlines in the state-controlled press, the NATO attack on the Belgrade embassy is being viewed here as part of a long-standing American plot to contain China.

"After the breakup of the Soviet Union, China has become United States' No. 1 strategic enemy, not only today but into the 21st century," read a poster that received close attention today near the Beijing University campus. "While we are calling: 'Down with the USA,' " the poster said, "the United States is seriously engaging in work to overthrow China."

The depth of these beliefs, which is hard to exaggerate, helps explain why China has been reluctant to accept apologies made by President Clinton. Chinese, from well-connected security officials to university professors, complained that Clinton's words lacked sincerity; several said they were surprised that the United States did not attempt to send an envoy to smooth the waters.

Moreover, for a complex web of reasons, many people in China have no interest in believing the attack was a mistake. The Communist Party does not want to believe the embassy was bombed in error, because it can use the incident to deflect attention from the 10th anniversary of the June 4 government crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. China also faces enormous social problems, such as unemployment and official corruption, so a round of full-throated nationalism, despite its inherent risks, is seen by the party as a welcome distraction from domestic concerns.

China's army and hard-line factions within the party and government also are uncomfortable with the country's current direction; it is becoming more capitalistic, less restrictive and more open to Western ideas. A round of nativist, anti-foreign demonstrations could be the antidote to such trends, these people think.

Nevertheless, whether they were marching in angry mobs, gathered on university campuses or relaxing at a McDonald's, the Chinese view of the bombing has been unmistakable. Several dozen people have charged in interviews that the United States intentionally bombed the Belgrade embassy because it wants to keep China down. Over and over, people declared that the United States never would have killed three Chinese citizens if China were as strong as America.

"It wasn't an attack on the embassy; it was that America wanted to make a point," said Zhang Bin, a Beijing software engineer. "America has a strategy. It wants to feel out China. It wants to do an experiment – to hit you and see if you respond, to see if Chinese people will submit to this kind of American power politics."

U.S. officials have said the attack was a tragic mistake caused by military planners who had relied on an outdated map. But people here said their respect for America's technological prowess makes it impossible for them to believe that explanation. "You have the best science in the world. How could you lie and say it was a mistake?" said Wang Yali, a 33-year-old award-winning documentary filmmaker, who has lived in New York.

The background of Chinese nationalism offers clues to the depth of feeling about these issues here, where nativist sentiments coexist uneasily with a desire to be open to the world. The same people who are protesting today could be applying for U.S. visas tomorrow.

For decades, the Beijing government's propaganda apparatus has beaten the drum of nationalism, exploiting a history of invasion by Western powers and the Japanese. The ruling Communist Party bases its legitimacy on its role in helping Chinese "stand up" in the world after more than 100 years of foreign humiliation.

On the street, NATO is routinely compared to the alliance of eight foreign armies that, at the beginning of this century, crushed the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising of Chinese farmers against the depredations of Western imperialist powers. The government-approved slogans are also laden with history: "Down with American imperialism" has its roots in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. "America, paper tiger" dates to the Korean War of the 1950s.

Conspiracy theories have always had great currency in Chinese society, in part because of people's restricted access to information. But the conspiracy theories stemming from the embassy attack border on the wacky.

A Chinese businessman who travels routinely to the United States argued that the anger caused by the attack would give NATO the excuse it needs to end its mission in the Balkans. A doctoral candidate in economics at prestigious Qinghua University asserted that the attack was related to the Asian financial crisis.

"The United States caused that crisis to get all the money from Asia onto American soil," he said. "They attacked our embassy because China so far has avoided much of the pitfalls of the crisis."