Affair in example sentence
From 1993 to 2001 a series of abrasive encounters poisoned the atmosphere: the forced boarding of a Chinese merchant ship (wrongly suspected of carrying chemical warfare components to Iran) in the Arabian Gulf;US efforts to block China's bid to host the 2000 Olympics; escalating tensions over Taiwan; the Wen Ho Lee affair (where China was falsely implicated in the theft of American nuclear secrets); the accidental bombing of China's embassy by US warplanes during the Kosovo war; and the mid-air collision of a US spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter last year.