US urged to stop ‘close-in’ spying
Print Edition
CHINA yesterday told the United States to end air and naval surveillance near its borders, saying it was damaging relations between the Pacific powers and could lead to “undesirable accidents.”
The US should “take concrete measures to decrease close-in reconnaissance activities against China toward a complete stop,” defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said at a monthly briefing.
ÇHina and the US were at odds over an incident last week in the skies 220 kilometers off China’s Hainan Island. The US said an armed Chinese fighter jet flew “dangerously close” to a US military aircraft, while China countered in a ministry statement that the allegations were totally groundless.
“The location of the incident is 220 kilometers from China’s Hainan Island,” Yang said. “It is not 220 kilometers from Hawaii in the United States and certainly not 220 kilometers from Florida. So the rights and wrongs of this case are very clear.”
“The United States calls it an ‘unsafe and unprofessional intercept’ and ‘Chinese provocation,’” Yang said. “But indeed the Chinese pilot’s operation is professional and has taken safety into consideration.
“Compared to those countries that let their pilots fly about at other people’s doorsteps, we certainly value the security of our pilots and equipment more,” he said.
The encounter has raised comparisons to an incident in April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US Navy EP-3 spy plane around 110 kilometers off Hainan.
One Chinese pilot died and the US plane had to make an emergency landing on Hainan where China detained the 24-member crew for more than a week until Beijing and Washington cut a deal for their release.
The two militaries have been stepping up exchanges and visits in an effort to build trust and try to work out guidelines to avoid miscalculations.
Regarding just such a scheduled meeting under way this week in Washington, Yang offered no details.
China has long complained about US surveillance flights that just skim the edge of China’s territorial airspace. However, Yang said such flights had become more frequent this year, covering a wider area and coming even closer to the Chinese coast. “What I need to stress is that the US side has kept talking about the technical issues like the distance between the two aircraft, but ignored a policy issue of highly frequent close-in reconnaissance activities against China,” he said.
US sea and air surveillance missions occur most frequently during Chinese military exercises or weapons tests, raising the risk of accidents and misunderstandings, Yang said.
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