China says jets to be scrambled only when 鈥榬eal threat鈥 in zone
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China will scramble military jets only when a foreign aircraft flying over its newly established air defense zone in the East China Sea poses a real threat, the defense ministry said yesterday.
US, Japanese and South Korean military aircraft all breached the zone last week without informing Beijing, and China later scrambled fighters to the area.
“Bomber jets are unnecessary when an entering aircraft is found to pose no threat to us, but necessary surveillance is needed,” Geng Yansheng, a ministry spokesman, said in a statement on the ministry’s website. “When the entering threat is ascertained to reach a certain extent, military aircraft will be mobilized at an appropriate time to dispose of the situation.”
China will take different steps depending on whether an “entering aircraft” is “military or civilian, the extent of threat, or distance,” Geng said.
The Japanese and South Korean governments have advised their airlines not to submit flight plans in advance, something China has demanded since the zone was created on November 23.
Japan Airlines and ANA Holdings, however, are uneasy about flying through the zone without notifying China’s civil aviation authorities, two sources familiar with the Japanese carriers told Reuters.
Geng said China’s request for flight plans was good for aviation safety.
“A small number of countries’ resolute refusal to report is not beneficial, and is an irresponsible display,” Geng said. “The East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone is a safe, not risky, zone, a zone of cooperation not confrontation.
Statements ‘incorrect’
“Some people take the ADIZ to be a territorial airspace by falsely saying that China violates other countries’ interests; some equate the ADIZ with a no-fly zone, accusing China of severely undermining the freedom of overflight. Both statements are incorrect.”
In response to remarks by “an individual country” that China’s establishment of zone has unilaterally altered the East China Sea’s status quo and escalated regional tension, Geng said: “The fact is that they established an ADIZ as early as 1969 and later expanded its scope many times to only 130 kilometers toward our coastline from its west end, which covers most of the airspace of the East China Sea, so they are not qualified at all to make irresponsible remarks on China’s lawful and rational act.”
US Vice President Joe Biden yesterday called on Japan and China to find ways to reduce tensions that spiked after Beijing set up the zone that includes disputed islands, while repeating that Washington was “deeply concerned” by the move.
Treaty obligations
The United States has made clear it will stand by treaty obligations that require it to defend the Japanese-controlled islands, but it is also reluctant to get dragged into any military clash.
“This action has raised regional tensions and increased the risk of accidents and miscalculation,” Biden told a news conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“This underscores the need for crisis management mechanisms and effective channels of communication between China and Japan to reduce the risk of escalation.”
Biden was on the first leg of an Asian trip that will take him to Beijing today and then to Seoul.
Biden also called for better ties between Washington’s Asian allies Tokyo and Seoul, chilled in recent months due in part to bitter South Korean memories of the 1910-1945 Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula.
Japan reiterated that Tokyo and Washington had both rejected Beijing’s establishment of the air defense zone — despite the fact that three US airlines, on government advice, are notifying China of plans to transit the area.
“We reaffirmed that policies and measures of both our countries, including the operations of the (Japanese) Self-Defense Forces and US forces, will not change and we will closely cooperate,” Abe told the news conference.
“We agreed we will not condone any actions that threaten the safety of civilian aircraft.”
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