Despite several weeks of intense US pressure to soften - or even retract - the proposed law, China’s leaders did little more than attempt to reinforce their position that “non-peaceful” (i.e., military) measures would serve strictly as a last resort - which had already been assumed anyway. The Bush administration’s reaction was uncharacteristically blunt, with its call for “Beijing to reconsider the passage of the law'” – a rather directly worded intrusion into what China considers to be an internal matter.