[13] On the other hand, according to structured interviews conducted in 2002 of the 57% of Chinese relations experts who believed that the bombing was deliberate, 87.5% did not suspect President Clinton's involvement.

The folder originated within the CIA and described the target as a warehouse for a Yugoslav government agency suspected of arms proliferation activities.

A report by the French Ministry of Defense after the war said that "part of the military operations were conducted by the United States outside the strict framework of NATO"[25] and that a dual-track command structure existed.

[27] However, the joint Observer/Politiken investigation reported that a NATO flight controller in Naples said that on this "don't hit" map, the Chinese embassy was listed at its correct location.

[29] On the night of May 7–8, the strike was carried out by a single B-2 bomber with a crew of two[30] of the United States Air Force's 509th Bomb Wing flying directly out of Whiteman AFB, Missouri.

The embassy had taken precautionary measures in view of the ongoing bombing campaign, sending staff home and housing others in the basement,[31] but the attack still resulted in three fatalities: Shao Yunhuan (邵云环) who worked for the Xinhua News Agency, Xu Xinghu (许杏虎) and his wife Zhu Ying (朱颖) who worked for Guangming Daily, both Chinese state media, in addition to at least 20 people being injured.

[39] Large demonstrations erupted at consular offices of the United States and other NATO countries in China in reaction to news of the bombing.

On May 9, 1999, then-Vice President Hu Jintao delivered a national televised speech calling the act both "criminal" and "barbaric" and that it "has greatly infuriated the Chinese people.

[47][48] Jiang had chosen to leave U.S.-China leadership communications channels unused as he waited for the Politburo Standing Committee to reach a consensus.

[55] Late on May 8, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen and George Tenet issued a joint press release stating neither the aircrew involved nor the equipment were to blame for the incident.

William Cohen told reporters "In simple terms, one of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map".

Schmitt reported that from the grainy aerial photographs that were used the two buildings looked very similar in terms of size, shape and height, and that the distance between them is about 200 yards (180 m).

[64] Former Ambassador Li Daoyu stated "we don't say it was a decision of Clinton or the White House",[65] but the Chinese government describes the U.S. explanation for "the so-called mistaken bombing" as "anything but convincing" and has never accepted the U.S. version of events.

[67][68] In a 2011 meeting with U.S. officials in the aftermath of the 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan, Chinese general Ma Xiaotian directly referred to the embassy bombing by asking "Were you using the wrong maps again?

[67][68] On October 17, 1999, The Observer[a] published an article by John Sweeney, Jens Holsoe and Ed Vulliamy stating that the bombing was deliberate.

[9] On the same day, Copenhagen-based publication Politiken published a similar story in Danish saying that the bombing was deliberate, claiming the Chinese were helping the Yugoslavian forces who were engaged in ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Kosovo.

[69] On November 28, 1999, The Observer published a follow-up piece stating that the Americans bombed the embassy due to allegations that the Chinese were helping Željko Ražnatović, a Serbian mobster, paramilitary leader, and indicted war criminal.

[70] In the Politiken story, a source within the British Ministry of Defense is quoted as saying that the Chinese gave permission to the Yugoslavian army to use the embassy as a communications base.

The British source stated the normal practice in this case would be to contact the Chinese and to ask them to stop the activity due to its violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and that they assumed that happened but did not have specific knowledge on it.

One non-anonymous source was Dusan Janjic, an academic and advocate for ethnic reconciliation in Yugoslavia who testified that the military attaché at the embassy, Ren Baokai, openly spoke to him about how China was spying on the U.S.[73][74] Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State at the time, called the story that the bombing was deliberate "balderdash", and Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary at the time, said, "I know not a single shred of evidence to support this rather wild story.

[77] Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times responded along with Douglas Stanglin of USA Today, and FAIR summarized the exchanges in a post on November 3, 1999.

[12] In the post, and in response to Rosenthal, FAIR listed the various anonymous sources in terms of general position in the command hierarchy, location, and role and said that if they had come forward publicly they could have been court martialed.

A genuinely accidental attack would not imply legal responsibility, but the report stated that "the very basic information needed to prevent this mistake was publicly and widely available at the time" and that, "It would appear that NATO failed to take the necessary precautions required by Article 57(2) of Protocol I.

"[96] Marking the 10th anniversary of the bombing on May 7, 2009, Belgrade Mayor Dragan Đilas and Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Wei Jinghua dedicated a commemorative plaque at the location.

While the inscription on the original plaque explained why it had been placed there and included the date of the bombing and number of victims, the new one has a generic text in Serbian and Chinese: As a token of gratitude to PR China for support and friendship in hardest moments for the people of the Republic of Serbia, and in memory of the killed.

[104] In advance of a state visit to Serbia overlapping the 25th anniversary of the bombing, Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote an article in the Serbian newspaper Politika in which he stated, "The friendship between China and Serbia which is soaked in blood that the two peoples spilled together has become a joint memory of the two peoples and will encourage both parties to make together huge steps forward.