US bombers cross China’s claimed air defense zone
Beijing says it was monitoring planes as they flew near islands claimed by Japan
BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday it had monitored two unarmed US bombers that flew over the East China Sea in defiance of Beijing’s declaration it was exercising greater military control over the area.
Tuesday’s flight of the B-52 bombers underscored US assertions that it will not comply with Chinese demands that aircraft flying through its newly declared maritime air defense zone identify themselves and accept Chinese instructions.
A Chinese Defense Ministry statement released Wednesday said the planes were detected and monitored as they flew through the zone for two hours and 22 minutes. It said all aircraft flying through the zone would be monitored, but made no mention of a threat to take “defensive emergency measures” against noncompliant aircraft that was included in an announcement on Saturday.
“China has the capability to exercise effective control over the relevant airspace,” said the brief statement, attributed to an unidentified ministry spokesman.
The US described the flights as a training mission and said they were not flown to respond to China’s latest move to assert a sovereignty claim over a group of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan. The two B-52 bombers took off from their home base in Guam around midday and were in the zone for less than an hour before returning to their base, US officials said, adding the aircraft encountered no problems.
The bomber flights came after State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said China’s move appeared to be an attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea.
“This will raise regional tensions and increase the risk of miscalculation, confrontation and accidents,” she told reporters.
The US, which has hundreds of military aircraft based in the region, has said it has zero intention of complying with the new Chinese demands. Japan likewise has called the zone invalid, unenforceable and dangerous, while Taiwan and South Korea, both close to the US, also rejected it.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest would not specifically comment Tuesday on the military flights. “It continues to be our view that the policy announced by the Chinese over weekend is unnecessarily inflammatory and has a destabilizing impact on the region,” he told reporters traveling with Obama in Los Angeles.
China’s move to further assert its territorial claims over the islands is not expected to immediately spark confrontations with foreign aircraft. Yet it fits a pattern of putting teeth behind China’s claims and could potentially lead to dangerous encounters depending on how vigorously China enforces it — and how cautious it is when intercepting aircraft from Japan, the US and other countries.
While enforcement is expected to start slowly, Beijing has a record of playing the long game, and analysts say they anticipate a gradual scaling-up of activity.
Beijing’s weekend declaration was praised by hardline Chinese nationalists, underscoring Beijing’s need to play to domestic public opinion. Strategically, it also serves to keep the island controversy alive as part of Beijing’s goal to force Tokyo to accept that the islands are in dispute — a possible first step to joint administration or unilateral Chinese control over them.
Chinese reaction to the bomber flights on the Internet was predictably angry, with some recalling the 2001 collision between a Chinese fighter and a U.S. surveillance plane in international airspace off China’s southeastern coast. The Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, was killed in the crash and the US crew forced to make a landing on China’s Hainan island, where they were held for 10 days and repeatedly interrogated before being released.
“Let’s not repeat the humiliation of Wang Wei. Make good preparations to counter-attack,” wrote Zheng Daojin, a reporter with the official Xinhua News Agency on his Twitter-like Weibo microblog.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
