World Naval Developments

This satellite image taken on 4 April shows the Navy EP-3E parked on a taxiway of the Lingshui military airfield on the southeastern coast of Hainan.

On 1 April, a U.S. Navy EP-3E electronic surveillance aircraft flying in international airspace over the South China Sea was crashed into by a Chinese Navy J-8 fighter. The damaged U.S. airplane then landed on the Chinese island of Hainan. The 24-member crew left the airplane and was placed in a government guest house. Chinese officials charged that the airplane had been spying, and that once damaged it had landed without permission on Hainan. They demanded an apology. Several days later their demands escalated: for the crew to be released, the United States would have to cease all surveillance operations off the Chinese coast.

For its part, the U.S. government referred to the incident as an unfortunate accident, and expressed confidence that the Chinese would return the crew. It also demanded that no attempt be made to board or examine the airplane, which is, in effect, U.S. territory (just as a U.S.-flag warship is U.S. territory). The crew reported that they had succeeded in destroying secret equipment aboard the airplane before being marched off it. The EP-3E has an onboard satellite link that probably was used even after the airplane landed on Hainan. After 11 days of impasse, the United States issued a carefully worded statement expressing sorrow for the death of the Chinese fighter pilot and for the landing without permission, and the Chinese took that as sufficient reason to release the crew. The fate of the damaged airplane was left for later discussion.

The radio chatter between the Chinese fighters and between fighters and controllers could be heard by some Taiwanese. One of them reported that the EP-3E had been flying over one of the new Russian-supplied Sovremmennyy-class destroyers, which are of particular interest to the U.S. Navy because they carry the best Chinese antiship missile, the Russian-supplied SS-N-22 (Moskit, in Russian parlance). Among other things, the EP-3E presumably was collecting the “fingerprints” of radars on board the destroyer. Each radar of a given type emits slightly different signals, and by using those differences a ship carrying that particular radar can be tracked. The U.S. Navy developed this technique during the Cold War, using airplanes to match ships with their signatures and then satellites to track the ships once their signatures were known. An EP-3E also carries linguists who might listen to radio chatter from the ship in hopes of gauging her readiness. Other operators would have listened in hopes of picking up data links. The Chinese Navy operates a wide variety of ships from different sources. Some use a French combat system normally associated with a link related to the NATO Link 11. The Russians use a very different system. Does the destroyer have the Russian system, in which case she can cooperate tactically only with other Russian-supplied ships? Or did the Chinese have their French-derived link installed, in which case she can operate with their own ships?

The airplane’s task would explain why Chinese naval fighters would have been called up to protect a Chinese naval asset. Reportedly, the EP-3E was flying very slowly, and the two jet fighters found it difficult to keep pace while trying to elbow the U.S. airplane away from the destroyer. They therefore circled. On one such circle, a pilot accidentally crashed into the U.S. airplane. Another account has the pilot deliberately flying under the EP-3E, then bouncing up just in front of it, in hopes of causing the U.S. pilot to stall out—and to crash. He had harassed other U.S. naval aircraft flying over the South China Sea; he had been photographed and even had thumbed his nose at his victims by displaying his e-mail address on a sheet of paper as he flew by. On at least one occasion he came within 30 feet of an airplane, and he may have come as close as 10 feet. In this case he came too close, and apparently crashed. One of the four engines of the U.S. airplane was knocked out and a propeller on another was damaged. The Chinese fighter seems to have crossed the path of the EP-3E from below, cutting into its horizontal tail with its own vertical tail. Photos taken on the ground show the nose radome and the antenna inside gone. It is not clear whether that was the result of damage in the air, perhaps from the tail of the Chinese fighter, or of work done after the airplane landed.

The EP-3E was only the latest in a series of incidents that seemed to show Chinese contempt for the United States. Several U.S. scholars, some permanent residents and some citizens, have been arrested for spying. In at least one case that meant seeking old newspapers printed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s. Chinese fighters repeatedly have interfered with U.S. air operations over the South China Sea and nearby waters. In one case a fighter flew so close to one U.S. aircraft that it broke up a formation of carrier aircraft. This behavior is reminiscent of Soviet Cold War risk-taking prior to the conclusion of the Incidents at Sea agreement.

Much more ominously, some early reports suggested that the fighters had jumped the EP-3E specifically to force it down to a Chinese airfield. If that is true, the incident most closely parallels the North Korean seizure of the electronic surveillance ship USS Pueblo (AGER-2) during the Vietnam War. At that time, hostilities were averted mainly because the United States did not want to be caught in a second Asian war. This time the main deterrent to any sort of hostilities is Chinese possession of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. However, there are other deterrents as well. China produces much of what the United States uses, and it can be argued that this country would face considerable damage if that source of inexpensive supply were cut off.

The EP-3E incident is the latest in a long line of Chinese attempts to elbow the United States out of the Far East. Chinese references to “territorial waters” mean the long-standing claim, disputed by six other countries, that China has sovereignty over the South China Sea, with its rich fishery and its suspected massive oil fields. Strategists have long expected that China would enforce its claim by military action, and reports of Chinese attempts to obtain an aircraft carrier often are linked with such a project. Because China is so much more powerful than any of the other claimants to territory in the South China Sea, it long seemed that they would have either to surrender or somehow to involve a reluctant United States. For China deliberately to challenge the United States seems irrational, because it solves the other claimants’ problem. It may be that to the Chinese leadership the United States is fundamentally corrupt and soft. Demonstrating that softness publicly would make other adversaries give up, since the United States would be their only hope to resist Chinese power.

In an important way the United States is a real barrier to the Chinese. This country advocates and exemplifies a democracy that many Chinese find very attractive. The main objective of the Chinese Communist Party is to retain power, and it cannot therefore tolerate any kind of democracy—as it graphically demonstrated in crushing protesters in Tienanmen Square in Beijing in 1989. Sheer power is not really enough, however. The Communists want absolute acceptance of their rule. They have made that difficult. Before the 1980s, the rationale for Communist rule was that the Party alone understood the appropriate path of national development, through a planned economy. However, beginning in the 1980s the Party announced that the free capitalist market was a perfectly acceptable economic path. All of its strictures of the 1950s through the 1970s were abandoned. Now it no longer was clear just why the Party had any business ruling China.

The Party developed two rationales. One was that only the Party could hold together so massive and diverse a country. This rationale helps explain why the current Chinese leadership finds it so vital to gain control over Taiwan, the “renegade province” with its own form of government and its much more successful economy.

The other rationale was that only the Party would make China great, which the Party interprets to mean regaining all the territory stolen by the rapacious West, such as Hong Kong. Other supposed thefts are a more subtle proposition. For example, the Chinese claimed Vietnam as a tributary state, but the Vietnamese reject that idea. The largest pieces of territory were taken by the czars, amounting to all of Siberia. Since the “unequal treaties” involved date back as far as the 17th century, it might be argued that many such claims are pointless. Yet, there is no question but that the territory is rich, and that the Russians currently are quite weak. The potential Chinese threat may explain why the Russians are following what amounts to a policy of appeasement, selling the Chinese weapons that ultimately may be turned against them.

To some extent, as in the old Soviet Union, the story of World War II is a unifying theme in modern China. Mao always claimed that his guerilla fighters had defeated the Japanese, downplaying the American contribution to the war. The Japanese never really apologized for the gruesome atrocities they committed in China, nor did they offer much restitution. Any Chinese government that owed its legitimacy to a nationalist claim might well feel impelled to exact some retribution from Japan.

During the crisis, some commentators pointed out that the Chinese have adopted a foreign policy of victimization, in analogy to some unfortunate social trends in the Western world. China is portrayed as uniquely oppressed, and such oppression justifies their countermeasures. They become impossible to deter because they portray (to themselves) their acts of aggression as acts of defense, or of restoration of previous rights. Clearly a universal application of such ideas would lead to endless wars—as those living in the Balkans have discovered. It is striking that other major Asian countries that suffered worse from the West have spent less of their time complaining about past ill fortune. India comes to mind. It also might be worthwhile to remind the Chinese that the history of other nations involves counterclaims. For example, whatever claims the Chinese make concerning Taiwan, that island has only very rarely been under the control of whatever regime ruled the mainland.

Traditionally, the Chinese viewed their country as the center of the world. All the world owed tribute of some form. As Chinese power waned, the extent of tribute was watered down, and much of the demand became self-delusion; but the idea survived. For example, in the late 1940s, as he gained control of China, Mao Tse-tung seems to have believed that his country was the central prize in the Cold War, the main target of the United States. He had no evidence to back him, only his prejudices. To the extent that he discovered just how little importance American decision makers attached to China, that probably infuriated him. The point of the story is that the current rulers have the power, denied to Chinese rulers for perhaps four centuries, to expand control. Their move into the South China Sea can be read in that context. It can be presented as defensive, but almost all aggressors explain their actions in that way. To the victims, it is anything but benign.

In this context, the United States is a barrier to Chinese ambitions. It must be ejected from areas coveted by the Chinese. U.S. naval aircraft flying over the South China Sea become opportune targets. If they can be chased away, then that proves that the United States will not stand up to a resurgent China. A local victory of this sort will discourage not only the countries claiming sovereignty over parts of the South China Sea but also Taiwan. When the Chinese ask whether the United States would trade Los Angeles for Taipei in some future incident, they are trying to eject the United States from what they want to be their part of the world.

The timing of the incident is suggestive. Presented with a new administration, the Chinese probably wanted to know how it would react to their continuing pressure on American quasi allies such as Taiwan. There also was a suggestion that the incident was intended to provide the Chinese with hostages to bargain for return of a Chinese colonel who defected to the United States last December. Presumably the Chinese are unaware of just how deep the resentment over the incident can become or, for that matter, of how such national anger can affect governmental actions. One peculiarity of early U.S. press coverage was that Chinese dismemberment of the EP-3E was considered no worse than U.S.-sponsored dismemberment of a Soviet MiG-25 whose pilot defected. That the EP-3E was forced down by Chinese fighters, whereas the MiG pilot acted entirely voluntarily, apparently was irrelevant. Indeed, one could argue that the force-down was intentional, that the Chinese wanted the airplane. There is no Cold War American parallel to this sort of piratical act. To the Chinese, this sort of coverage may confirm that the United States is indeed the soft, decadent country they imagine it to be.

For us, the EP-3E is a lightning rod. The incident shows that the Chinese are serious. If indeed they forced the airplane down, and did not merely allow it to land after their fighter accidentally and almost fatally damaged it, they have seized a U.S.-flag airplane in international airspace. That is an act of war, no matter the manner in which it is cloaked. The effrontery of demanding an apology harks back to the Chinese idea that their legitimate sphere of sovereignty is the entire Far East, in which we are intruding.

Presumably the Chinese view is that forcing down a U.S. airplane is not nearly as dangerous as attacking a U.S. warship, and that our reaction will show just how serious we are. In that case focusing on the crew is a mistake. At the least, we ought to be demanding an apology from the Chinese, and probably some restitution for damage to the airplane. It is argued that the Chinese cannot afford the loss of “face” that would be involved. However, the Chinese are equally aware that a U.S. step down will seriously damage our own prestige in the Far East. Indeed, that may have been the purpose of the incident.

The burden would seem to be on the Chinese to prove that the incident was not an intentional attack. The Chinese pilot has repeatedly been described, in the U.S. press, as a maverick who liked to show off. Given the tight control the Chinese government excercises, and the very high level at which the United States was accused of various misdeeds, a more plausible explanation would be that he was a particularly expert pilot brought in specifically to cause aerial incidents short of military action. The Chinese have to make a plausible case that his actions were not authorized at the highest levels. Although the incident is quite serious, given other factors it is not likely to lead to war, or even to a breach of relations. More likely a cold war with the Chinese is developing, and the EP-3E incident will be seen, in five or ten years, as an important early indication of just where the situation was going.

For the United States, the incident probably shows that the Chinese believe that their small force of ballistic missiles gives them considerable freedom of action against us. A credible U.S. national missile defense would go a long way toward dispelling any such view, because it would indicate to the Chinese leadership just how serious the United States was. Most of the missile defense debate has occurred on two levels. One is technical: how easy would it be to defeat? Another is political: how badly will a U.S. system upset our allies? Neither is altogether relevant. The real issue is how such a system would affect the calculations of its likely enemies, which certainly include the Chinese.

One peculiarity of public discussion of the EP-3E incident was the distinction often drawn between Chinese hard- and soft-liners, with President Jiang Zemin often described as mediating between the hard-liners of the Chinese military and the softer-liners of the foreign ministry. Our post-Cold War knowledge of the Soviet Union suggests that such distinctions often are an unfortunate attempt to mirror-image. In the old Soviet Union, factions within the government were generally based on loyalty to particular people rather than to fixed ideas. In a democracy, a politician gains power from the sheer number of his adherents. They follow him both for his personality and for the policies he backs, and if he veers away from those policies he risks a fatal loss of popularity. He generally cannot suddenly reverse positions. In a Communist dictatorship, however, mass support has little significance. Sudden reversals of policy carry few consequences. Policies become issues of debate, but the winner in such a debate can easily adopt the policy he has just castigated the loser for advocating. No one who remembers that Jiang was deeply involved both in the Tienanmen Square assault of 1989 and in the recent assault on the Falun Gong sect can consider him a moderate on the one central issue, which is the absolute dictatorship exercised by the Chinese Communist Party. As long as that dictatorship survives, talk of Chinese hard- and soft-liners is delusive.

It is true that the Chinese government sought to whip up a popular feeling of outrage about the EP-3E incident. It was able to argue to Americans that it could not retreat quickly, because that would have been unacceptably embarrassing. This argument helped it enforce its ludicrous view of the incident. Under the most charitable view, the airplane landed on Hainan after a Chinese pilot flying a Chinese military aircraft almost fatally damaged it. Had the U.S. pilot not been so skillful, the outcome would have been 24 dead Americans. No one has pointed out that the Chinese government should have been apologizing to us for an assault on a U.S. airplane over international waters. Presumably the major advantage of whipping up popular feeling was to convince Chinese citizens to veer away from any friendship toward the United States that might carry the taint of liking our democratic system. If this seems far-fetched, the reader might discover that, on deciding to enter the Korean War in 1950, Mao said that a major advantage would be to dissuade Chinese from their existing friendship with the United States, and to convince them that true patriotism demanded hatred for their old non-Communist friend across the Pacific.