China Says It Monitored Defiant US Bomber Flights

(AP) China says it monitored defiant US bomber flights
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press
BEIJING
China said Wednesday it monitored two unarmed U.S. bombers that flew over the East China Sea in defiance of Beijing’s declaration it is exercising greater military control over the area.

Tuesday’s flight of the B-52 bombers underscored U.S. 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 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.

Asked repeatedly about the incident at a regularly scheduled briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said it had been handled according to procedures laid out in the Saturday statement but offered no specifics.

The U.S. described the flights as a training mission and said they were not flown in response to China’s move to assert its claim of sovereignty over a group of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan. U.S. officials said the two B-52 bombers took off from their home base in Guam around midday and were in the zone that encompasses the disputed islands for less than an hour before returning to their base, 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.

The U.S., which has hundreds of military aircraft based in the region, has said it has no 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 U.S., also rejected it.

Australia also said it called in the Chinese ambassador to express concern about the sudden zone declaration.

Beijing’s move fits a pattern of putting teeth behind its territorial claims and is seen as potentially leading to dangerous encounters depending on how vigorously China enforces it _ and how cautious it is when intercepting aircraft from Japan, the U.S. and other countries.

Chinese reaction to the bomber flights 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 kind of accident some fear China’s new policy could make more likely. The Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, was killed in the crash and the U.S. crew forced to make a landing on China’s Hainan island, where they were held for 10 days and repeatedly interrogated before being released.

Businessman Li Pengliang said the island dispute had heightened anti-Japanese sentiment, but doubted the chances of an open conflict.

Still others criticized the government’s handling of what they termed a battle of psychological pressure and international public opinion. “China is terrible at telling its side of the story. The silent one is the loser so why don’t they better explain our response to the American bomber flight,” wrote Hu Xijin, editor of the nationalist tabloid Global Times, on his blog.

It wasn’t clear whether Beijing had anticipated the forceful response from Washington and others, or how well it is prepared to back up its demands.

Chinese scholars, who often serve as ad-hoc government spokesmen, criticized Tuesday’s flights as a crude show of force and said Beijing wasn’t looking for a fight.