Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright hailed as trailblazer and champion of human rights, but leaves ‘mixed legacy’ over China

The first woman to become America’s top diplomat, who has died at the age 84, was a strong supporter of engagement with Beijing

Albright helped defuse the tensions after the 1999 bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade but her approach has been called into question in recent years

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Madeleine Albright has died at the age of 84. Photo: ZUMA Wire/dpa

Published: 10:44pm, 24 Mar 2022Updated: 2:41am, 25 Mar 2022

Madeleine Albright, who died on Wednesday at the age of 84, has been hailed as a trailblazer who arrived in the United States as a refugee from war-torn Europe and rose to become the first female secretary of state, but diplomatic observers have said she left a mixed legacy with regards to China policy.

In 1999, she raced to defuse the crisis in US-China relations following the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia by meeting Beijing’s ambassador in Washington to offer an explanation.

It was a critical time for both countries, as talks on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization were in their final stages but both governments were facing fierce criticism at home for conceding too much.

The Chinese ambassador Li Zhaoxing was stern-faced as he gave Albright a public dressing down in front of the television cameras, insisting that the attack which killed three Chinese citizens was “intentional”.

But she then asked for a private conversation with Li, who later rose to become foreign minister and whom she described as a “friend”.

“So I asked everybody to leave and I said to him, ‘Look, it really was a mistake,’ and I’m really sorry and I don’t want to get him into trouble even now,” Albright said in an interview for Georgetown University’s US-China Dialogue podcast in 2020.