News Snapshot:
China’s relations with the US administration of George W. Bush got off to an ominous start on April 1, 2001, with a mid-air collision between an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet near Hainan and Beijing’s detention of the US crew. The collision killed a Chinese pilot and fuelled anti-American sentiment across China as official media denounced it as another provocation, two years after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. For the first few days of the ensuing 11-day stand-off, Chinese leaders, including then president Jiang Zemin, demanded an apology and refused to take calls...
