Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking in an interview with the Al Jazeera network aired yesterday, defended his country’s construction activities in the South China Sea, blaming the U.S. instead of militarisation in the region.
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Last September a U.S. Air Force Rivet Joint reconnaissance jet was intercepted by People’s Liberation Army Navy Xian JH-7 fighter-bombers some 80 miles off the Chinese coast.
Especially noteworthy is the section that establishes responsibilities for aircraft when an intercept takes place. Further exacerbating tensions has been China’s massive reclamation project on the Spratly Islands.
This is the first “unsafe” Chinese intercept of an American plane since 2014.
“The US military warships and aircraft have conducted close-in reconnaissance with high frequency for a long time, posing a serious threat to China’s maritime and airspace security”, Hong said.
“What the Chinese and the Russians are trying to do is to provoke us into some kind of action that will feed into their domestic narratives, both in China and in Russia”. “Two Chinese jet fighters engaged in tailing and surveillance in keeping with laws and regulations, and they always maintained a safe distance”.
The U.S. has vowed to continue with missions over the South China Sea as it challenges Beijing’s view that its newly-created artificial islands enjoy legal rights to territorial seas and airspace.
While China has returned the blame, calling American claims “untrue” and saying the plane was in its waters off the island province of Hainan.
The latest intercept came ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to parts of Asia, beginning on Saturday, which will include the Group of Seven summit in Japan and a trip to Vietnam.
However, Baldanza said the Defense Department has seen some improvements in the actions of the Chinese military over the past year, with their pilots now flying in a “safe and professional manner”.
The interception is the latest escalation of tensions in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s claims over large swathes of territory are contested by almost all of its neighbours, including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. We demand that the U.S. immediately cease this type of close reconnaissance and prevent this sort of incident from happening again. The US aircraft was a Lockheed EP-3, a land-based reconnaissance plane.
The crash, which occurred in 2001, unleashed an 11-day standoff as Beijing interrogated the 24 United States crew, and held the plane for several months, seriously straining relations between the countries.
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“The vast majority of these [aircraft intercepts] you never hear about”, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said Friday.
