Debate on Air Zones Continues in South Korea

By Alastair Gale

South Korea continued to debate its response to China’s move to include an area of ocean disputed by the two nations in its own new air-defense identification zone.

On Thursday, South Korea said it would consider extending its own air-defense zone to respond to China’s move after Beijing refused a demand from Seoul to redraw its new zone.
Since then, the issue has been on the agenda at a series of high-level meetings in Korea’s capital as the government considers how to proceed.
In addition to inflaming its dispute with China, officials are aware the move could also worsen already-fraught ties with Japan. 

The air-defense identification zones of South Korea and Japan share a border and any move to extend the Korean zone would almost certainly overlap with Japanese interests.

A picture made available by the South Korean Navy shows a South Korean destroyer patrolling in waters around Ieodo. 

South Korean media reported that Seoul is considering extensions of its ADIZ to the south, east and west, primarily to cover an area of ocean around a submerged rock that is claimed by China but administered by South Korea. 

The rock has a Korean-built marine research station on it and the two nations claim exclusive economic rights to the area.
South Korea’s defense ministry, foreign ministry and presidential office all declined to comment on the discussions.
A decision from Seoul on the matter had been expected early this week. 

But local media report that it is likely to be delayed until later in the week and may come during or after a visit from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. 

Officials say a move to extend South Korea’s air-defense zone isn’t a given, but Seoul feels pressured to respond forcefully because of the long-running dispute with China over the area of ocean around the submerged rock and concerns the new Chinese air-defense zone would worsen South Korea’s position in future talks.
“An expansion isn’t the only option that serves national interest. Resolving, moderating and managing conflict is also a part of a national gain in a forward-looking perspective,” Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Wi Yong-seop said last week.
South Korea has refused to recognize the new Chinese zone and has instructed the nation’s airlines not to file flight plans to Chinese authorities when entering the zone.

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China's Threat: South Korea Plans to Expand Defense Zone

JONATHAN CHENG

SEOUL—South Korea pressed ahead with plans to expand its air-defense identification zone after a meeting with visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye shakes hands with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday.

As early as Sunday, Seoul says it will make a formal announcement about expanding its air defense zone, a direct response to China's recent move to create an air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea that has angered Japan, South Korea and the U.S.
Seoul is the only one of China's neighbors to respond in-kind following Beijing's unexpected announcement last month that it would require foreign aircraft to notify it when entering its new air-defense zone.
According to a statement issued by South Korea's presidential office, Mr. Biden acknowledged South Korean President Park Geun-hye's position on Korea's air defense zone.

Both sides agreed to continue discussing the matter, the statement said.
U.S. officials had no immediate account of the closed-door meeting, but shortly afterward, South Korea's foreign affairs and national security ministers convened to finalize plans for the new, expanded Korean zone.
In a briefing earlier on Friday, a spokesman for the defense ministry said that South Korea's newly-drawn expanded air-defense zone should cover a submerged reef claimed by both China and South Korea that falls within China's new air defense zone.
The submerged rock, known internationally as the Socotra Rock, is called Ieodo. South Korea runs a marine research station built on top of the rock.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said South Korea should keep to international laws and conventions in expanding its zone, adding that Beijing would stay in communication with Seoul.
Mr. Biden didn't refer to the plans for the enlarged South Korean air-defense zone in a speech at a Seoul university after his meeting with Ms. Park. 

However, he did repeat the U.S. position that it doesn't recognize the Chinese zone, while stopping short of calling on Beijing to repeal its air zone.
"We do not recognize the zone. It will have no effect on American operations—just ask my general," Mr. Biden said. "None. Zero."
In his speech, Mr. Biden called on South Korea, as well as Japan and China, to "lower the temperature" after several weeks of confusion and rhetoric on the region's various air defense zones.
"The possibility of miscalculation, a mistake, is real," he said, repeating recent calls by U.S. officials for better ties between Japan and South Korea, two U.S. allies that continue to bicker over historical and territorial disputes.
"The entire region will be more stable and more secure if the leading democracies—Japan, South Korea and the United States—are able to improve their relations and cooperation with one another," Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Biden's stop in Seoul, which concludes Saturday, wraps up a three-nation Asian tour that was originally planned to promote trade, but which has instead tested Washington's ability to keep tensions between China, Japan and South Korea from spilling over.

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U.S. Raises Concerns About South Korea Deal With China's Huawei

Cites Fears of Chinese Spying on Sensitive Communications
By ADAM ENTOUS

The Obama administration is privately raising concerns with officials in South Korea about their plans to let a Chinese telecommunications giant develop the country's advanced wireless network, expanding a quiet campaign to warn key allies against integrating the Chinese technology into their systems.
The U.S. effort in South Korea, which followed a similar push with close ally Australia, shows the extent to which the Obama administration is concerned about the expansion of China's Huawei Technologies Co. in building critical telecommunications networks for key allies. 

Washington sees a risk that the company's equipment could be used for spying on communications among its partners, as well as compromise secure networks used by American military personnel, U.S. officials said.
In 2011, the U.S. excluded Huawei from taking part in the building of a U.S. wireless network for emergency responders, citing national-security concerns. 

Last year, Australia blocked a Huawei unit from competing for contracts linked to the country's broadband network.
However, the behind-the-scenes push against Huawei also is taking place as the U.S. itself comes under fire over revelations about National Security Agency spying efforts around the world.
In the Australian case, as in the current South Korean case, the Obama administration raised concerns about Huawei in private meetings, U.S. officials said. 

U.S. officials said the administration has sought to air its concerns about Huawei privately rather than publicly in these countries because of the sensitivity within those countries to perceptions that the Obama administration is seeking to influence commercial decisions of key allies.
The move in South Korea could add to rising tensions with China. U.S. military and intelligence officials have long warned that China poses a cyberespionage threat to U.S. defense systems and companies. 

U.S. officials said the South Korea telecommunications network is particularly sensitive because of the presence of U.S. forces there to help defend the country against North Korea.
The U.S. moves on Huawei come as Vice President Joe Biden visits Asia this week amid tensions over Beijing's recent decision to declare a new air-defense zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea. Officials declined to comment on whether Mr. Biden would raise U.S. concerns about Huawei during his visit to South Korea this week.
U.S. officials and lawmakers said their concerns center on plans by South Korea to use Huawei in building the country's advanced long-term evolution network nationwide. 

U.S. officials said Huawei was selected as a subcontractor on the LTE project.

South Korea's presidential office, military and intelligence authorities all said they couldn't immediately comment on the U.S. concerns over Huawei. 

A spokesman for South Korea's communications ministry said the ministry hadn't been approached by the U.S. about the issue, adding that decisions over network equipment were up to the local companies involved in setting up the networks.

An spokesman at LG U+, a wireless communications carrier affiliated with South Korea's LG Group, said its decision to buy LTE equipment from Huawei shouldn't be seen as a security concern.
"Huawei just supplied the equipment to us," the spokesman said. 

"The Chinese firm is excluded from running the equipment in the wireless communications network. The wireless communications network is run wholly by LG U+ only."
The White House and the Pentagon declined to comment on potential South Korean commercial decisions.
A senior Obama administration official said: "I'm not going to discuss the details of our diplomatic discussions. We do have concerns about Huawei, evidenced by the fact that Huawei was excluded in October of 2011 from taking part in the building of America's wireless emergency network for first responders due to U.S. government national-security concerns."
Huawei charges less than many of its global competitors, making it an attractive business choice and complicating the U.S. pitch on national-security grounds.
U.S. officials said they are particularly concerned about close security partners integrating Huawei into their national telecommunications systems, especially when U.S. troops are based there.
"This is their IT infrastructure. There isn't really a role for the U.S. government to necessarily advise them. But our concerns are significant enough that we wanted to make sure that they know what we know," a senior U.S. official said.
Two Democratic senators, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein of California, raised concerns about the deal in a Nov. 27 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
In the letter, the lawmakers said the choice of Huawei to "develop and/or supply the Republic of Korea's advanced LTE telecommunications backbone raise serious questions and potential security concerns."
"As you know, the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance is a cornerstone for U.S. strategic engagement in Asia, and has served as a bulwark against North Korean aggression for the past six decades," Sens. Menendez and Feinstein wrote. 

"Maintaining the integrity of telecommunications infrastructure is critical to the operational effectiveness of this important security alliance."
The Menendez-Feinstein letter wasn't released publicly, but a copy was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

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U.S. Senators Say South Korea Should Not Hire China Firm Huawei

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — Two leading senators have asked the Obama administration to warn South Korea against allowing Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm, to build large parts of a next-generation network for the capital city of Seoul, arguing that it could give the Chinese government a way to enter the networks of a major American ally.
The issue appears almost certain to come up when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrives in Seoul later this week, the last stop on his Asian trip.
At a moment when the United States is already protesting China’s establishment of an “air defense zone” over disputed territory in the East China Sea, the Huawei issue is bound to be another irritant in an increasingly contentious discussion with the government of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The White House would not say whether Mr. Biden was planning to bring the issue up with the leadership in Seoul.
But a senior administration official, while declining to talk about the diplomatic discussions between Washington and South Korea, noted that “we do have concerns about Huawei, evidenced by the fact that Huawei was excluded in October of 2011 from taking part in the building of America’s wireless emergency network for first responders, due to U.S. government national security concerns.”
In that case, and in others, Huawei has been blocked from playing a major role in the American telecommunications market for fear that it would build a “back door” into its systems that would give the Chinese government entry points into the telecommunications networks and Web traffic.
For years, Huawei has dismissed those arguments, arguing that the company has no significant link to the Chinese government, and that its systems are open for scrutiny by regulatory authorities.
Recently, senior company executives have said they had all but given up on the American market.
The warning about the Seoul network came in a private letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.
In the letter, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, cited the close American and South Korean intelligence and military ties.
They warned that “the integrity of telecommunications infrastructure is critical to the operational effectiveness of this important security alliance” and asked for an “assessment of the potential threats” of having Huawei acting as a supplier to a new, advanced system in Seoul.
The senior administration official, who requested anonymity because it involved a sensitive diplomatic issue, would not say how the White House planned to respond to the letter.

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In the East China Sea, a Far Bigger Test of Power Looms

 

The long-term goal of the Chinese was to push the United States to “the second island chain,” farther out in the Pacific, keeping American air and naval assets ever farther from the region around China’s coast.
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — In an era when the Obama administration has been focused on new forms of conflict — as countries use cyberweapons and drones to extend their power — the dangerous contest suddenly erupting over a pile of rocks in the East China Sea seems almost a throwback to the Cold War.
Suddenly, naval assets and air patrols are the currency of a shadow conflict between Washington and Beijing that the Obama administration increasingly fears could escalate and that American officials have said could derail their complex plan to manage China’s rise without overtly trying to contain it.
As in the Cold War, the immediate territorial dispute seems to be an excuse for a far larger question of who will exercise influence over a vast region.
The result is that, as the Chinese grow more determined to assert their territorial claims over a string of islands once important mainly to fishermen, America’s allies are also pouring military assets into the region — potentially escalating the once obscure dispute into a broader test of power in the Pacific.
Now a maritime outpost that had modest strategic significance is taking on enormous symbolic import.
South Korea, which has broader concerns about China’s regional power, is building a new naval base for 20 warships, including submarines, arguing that it has to protect vital shipping lanes in the East China Sea for its exports — including many electronics headed to China.
The Japanese, after largely depending on American bases on Okinawa to back up their own limited patrols in the area, plan to build a new army base by 2016 on a small, inhabited island near the Senkaku islands.
The Japanese are also planning to deploy more F-15s and radar planes to Okinawa and a new helicopter carrier, and, for the first time, have considered buying unarmed American drones to patrol the area, part of a three-year-long shift in military strategy to focus on their southern islands and on China.
That is part of a fundamental change in the national mind-set toward a Japan that is more willing and able to defend itself than anytime since World War II, in part because of doubts about America’s own commitment to the region.
As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left on Sunday for a trip that will take him to the capitals of all three major contestants — Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing — the administration’s public message is that all sides need to cool down and keep nationalistic talk from making a tense situation worse.
Mr. Biden will encounter countries that are now re-examining how civilian and military officials interact: Over the past few weeks, for very separate reasons, Japan and China have each approved the creation of a national security council.
For Japan, it is an effort to strengthen the hand of the prime minister in times of crises, a concept the Japanese body politic long resisted because of the legacies of World War II.
For China, it appears to be an effort by President Xi Jinping to exercise a degree of control over all sources of national power that his immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, never fully mastered.
Interestingly, as China sent its aircraft carrier to another potential trouble spot, the South China Sea, its path avoided the disputed islands, perhaps a sign that the Chinese realize they may have overplayed their hand.
Still, in private, American officials say they are worried that a small incident — a collision like the one between an American intelligence plane and the Chinese air force a dozen years ago off Hainan Island — could rapidly worsen the situation.
On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Tom Donilon, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser until earlier this year and a principal architect of the administration’s approach to China, said a similar “risk of miscalculation” is what “we need to be very concerned about going forward here.”
A senior administration official said Mr. Biden’s message would be that the United States will “seek crisis management mechanisms and confidence-building measures to lower tensions and reduce risk of escalation or miscalculation.”
But one of Mr. Obama’s current advisers said, “It’s pretty clear this isn’t really about the islands.”
Declining to speak on the record about a sensitive strategic issue, the official added that it was about a desire by some in China, including the People’s Liberation Army and perhaps the new political leadership, “to assert themselves in ways that until recently they didn’t have the military capability to make real.”
The adviser added: “They say it’s in response to our efforts to contain them, but our analysis is that it’s really their effort to push our presence further out into the Pacific.”
In fact, on his last trip to Asia as secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates said in January 2011 that he believed the long-term goal of the Chinese was to push the United States to “the second island chain,” farther out in the Pacific, keeping American air and naval assets ever farther from the region around China’s coast.
Two years later, Obama officials will not utter that view in public, but it is a running theme in American intelligence assessments about the Chinese military, tempered by evidence that some Chinese officials worry about blowback if they overreach.
That has been a repeated cycle in Mr. Obama’s relations with the Chinese.
In 2010, a series of episodes, touched off by American arms sales to Taiwan and the ramming of a Japanese coast guard ship in the Senkakus by an inebriated Chinese sea captain, led China to cut off military-to-military relations between Beijing and Washington and the sale of rare-earth metals, used for electronics, to the Japanese.
Both proved temporary, and by the end of the year some senior Chinese officials, led by the state councilor, Dai Bingguo, warned that China’s actions were driving countries in the region into American hands.
“Some say China wants to replace the United States and dominate the world,” Mr. Dai wrote in an article that Mr. Donilon frequently cited. “That is simply a myth.”
But Mr. Dai is gone from power, and the Obama administration is now trying to figure out how to interpret each new Chinese action under Mr. Xi, of which the recent “air defense identification zone” was considered the most calculated and, perhaps, the most muscular.
Many countries claim such zones; China knew it was claiming it over disputed territory.
Mr. Obama’s immediate response was to send two unarmed B-52 bombers on what the Pentagon called “routine” runs over the territory; they were routine, but the timing and symbolism were lost on no one.
Now the White House faces the more complex task of its longer-term response.
To make the promise of his “Asian pivot” real, the president will have to convince Congress, and allies in the region, that he means to devote more military, diplomatic and economic attention there — not to contain China, he insists, but to preserve and extend America’s longtime role as a keeper of the peace in the Pacific.
That will be challenging at a time of Pentagon budget cuts, a national mood to focus on problems at home and a national security apparatus focused on Iran, Syria and the future of the Middle East.

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China air zone divides US and its allies

The U.S. capitulation undermines Japan, Washington’s most important ally in Asia.

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

When US B-52s roared their engines above the Senkaku Islands last Tuesday, the Japanese government viewed the move as a loud and clear message to China over its controversial new East China Sea air defence zone.
The right-leaning Yomiuri, Japan’s biggest daily newspaper, went as far as to claim that “China’s diplomatic isolation is becoming complete”.

But the mood shifted on Friday when the US urged its commercial airlines to comply with China’s “air defence identification zone” (ADIZ).
“The signal the US is sending to China and the region is confusing which is not a good thing,” said Chikako Ueki, an Asia security expert at Waseda University.
“The message had been that you cannot change the status quo by force... The key question is whether the US is going to be the defender of freedom of the sea and air, the so-called global commons, as it says.”
With US vice-president Joe Biden arriving in Japan on Monday for a scheduled visit, Ms Ueki said it was “important that the US sends a clear signal to China and to the region”, adding that the mood in Japan was now very negative towards Beijing.
From Washington to Tokyo to Seoul, countries with stakes in the Pacific expressed dismay when China unveiled its ADIZ without consultations. 

While many nations use ADIZs as aerial early warning systems, China’s zone covered the Japanese Senkaku and overlapped with Japan’s ADIZ.
The US statement on commercial airlines made clear that Washington did not accept China’s requirements for the ADIZ, but it went down badly in Tokyo, particularly because the government last week forced JAL and ANA to reverse course after the Japanese carriers started providing China with flight plans for the ADIZ.
Some experts have suggested that the move could be interpreted as the US caving in to China, and in doing so undermining Japan, Washington’s most important ally in Asia.
“On the surface, it looks like they have done that,” said Robert Manning, an Asia expert at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. 

“Biden is going to have to answer for it. The Japanese are not particularly happy about this.”
But Mr Manning said Washington may have felt compelled to prioritise commercial safety to avoid an accident like the one in 1983 when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airlines flight that breached its airspace.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe played down the US statement, saying that Washington had informed Japan through diplomatic channels that it had not advised US airlines to comply with the Chinese zone. 

A Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said Tokyo did not believe that the US had asked its commercial airlines to provide the Chinese with flight plans.
Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies at Temple University, said Mr Biden would have his “work cut out . . . to smooth Abe’s ruffled feathers”.
He said the US vice-president would need to encourage Mr Abe not to respond to China’s move by paying a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, a controversial memorial to Japan’s war dead that infuriates China.

But he added that while Mr Abe has protested at the Chinese move, privately the nationalist Japanese leader – who is scheduled to unveil a new defence programme later in December – may have welcomed the new ADIZ.
“I am sure that Abe privately gave a very big thank you to [Chinese President] Xi Jinping because this has put wind in his sails,” said Mr Kingston.
While Washington has come under some criticism for the statement on commercial aviation, Mr Kingston said the US had been put in a “tricky position” as it has its own ADIZ, even if the rules are different from China’s.
“You don’t want to reinforce the narrative in China that the big bad west is trying to keep us down,” he said.

Many also point out that China is forcing airlines flying through the zone to file flight plans, even when their final destination is not mainland China.
A spokesman for South Korea’s defence ministry said that the US had not talked to Seoul about the advice given to US commercial airlines on compliance with the Chinese air defence zone.
James Kim, an analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said that the US, South Korea and Japan risked “undermining each other’s position on these issues by sending mixed messages”, adding that all sides of the dispute appeared to be “testing how far the other side is willing to go”.
Gary Li, a senior analyst at IHS Maritime in Beijing, said the US was “not necessarily pulling the rug out” from under Japan and South Korea – whose airlines are also not complying with the Chinese ADIZ – but that the move “definitely makes the Chinese position stronger”.

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Face-off

Like a teenager on a growth spurt who doesn’t know his own strength, China has underestimated the impact of its actions. 

The Economist

THE announcement by a Chinese military spokesman on November 23rd sounded bureaucratic: any aircraft flying through the newly designated Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea must notify Chinese authorities in advance and follow instructions from its air-traffic controllers. 

America’s response was rapid. 

On November 26th Barack Obama sent two B-52 bombers to fly through the new zone without notifying China. 

This face-off marks the most worrying strategic escalation between the two countries since 1996, when China’s then president, Jiang Zemin, ordered a number of exclusion zones for missile tests in the Taiwan Strait, leading America to send two aircraft-carriers there.
Plenty of countries establish zones in which they require aircraft to identify themselves, but they tend not to be over other countries’ territory. 

The Chinese ADIZ overlaps with Japan’s own air-defence zone (see map). 

It also includes some Japanese specks of rock called the Senkaku islands, as well as a South Korean reef, known as Ieodo. 

The move is clearly designed to bolster China’s claims. 

On November 28th Japan and South Korea sent aircraft into the zone.

Teenage testosterone
Growing economic power is bound to go hand-in-hand with growing regional assertiveness. 

That is fine, so long as the behaviour of the rising power remains within international norms. 

In this case, however, China’s does not; and America, which has guaranteed free navigation of the seas and skies of East Asia for 60 years, is right to make that clear.
How worrying China’s move is depends partly on the thinking behind it.

It may be that, like a teenager on a growth spurt who doesn’t know his own strength, China has underestimated the impact of its actions. 

The claim that America’s bombers had skirted the edge of the ADIZ was gawkily embarrassing. 

But teenagers who do not realise the consequences of their actions often cause trouble: China has set up a casus belli with its neighbours and America for generations to come.
It would thus be much more worrying if the provocation was deliberate. 

The “Chinese dream” of Xi Jinping, the new president, is a mixture of economic reform and strident nationalism. 

The announcement of the ADIZ came shortly after a party plenum at which Mr Xi announced a string of commendably radical domestic reforms. 

The new zone will appeal to the nationalist camp, which wields huge power, particularly in the armed forces. It also helps defend Mr Xi against any suggestions that he is a westernising liberal.
If this is Mr Xi’s game, it is a dangerous one. 

East Asia has never before had a strong China and a strong Japan at the same time. 

China dominated the region from the mists of history until the 1850s, when the West’s arrival spurred Japan to modernise while China tried to resist the foreigners’ influence. 

China is eager to re-establish dominance over the region. 

Bitterness at the memory of the Japanese occupation in the second world war sharpens this desire. 

It is this possibility of a clash between a rising and an established power that lies behind the oft-used parallel between contemporary East Asia and early 20th-century Europe, in which the Senkakus play the role of Sarajevo.

Seas of troubles
Tensions are not at that level. 

Japan’s constitution bans it from any military aggression and China normally goes to great lengths to stress that its rise—unlike that of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s—will be peaceful. 

But the neighbours are nervous, especially as the establishment of the ADIZ appears to match Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
Chinese maps show what is known as the “nine-dash line” encompassing all the South China Sea. 

In the wake of the global financial crisis, perhaps believing its own narrative of Chinese rise and American decline, it began to overreach in its dealings with its neighbours. 

It sent ships to disputed reefs, pressed foreign oil companies to halt exploration and harassed American and Vietnamese naval vessels in the South China Sea. 

These actions brought a swift rebuke from America’s then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and China appeared to back off and return to its regional charm offensive. 

Some observers say that the government is using the ADIZ to establish a nine-dash line covering the East China Sea as well. 

They fear China’s next move will be to declare an ADIZ over the South China Sea, to assert control over both the sea and the air throughout the region.
Whether or not China has such specific ambitions, the ADIZ clearly suggests that China does not accept the status quo in the region and wants to change it. 

Any Chinese leader now has an excuse for going after Japanese planes. 

Chinese ships are already ignoring Japanese demands not to enter the waters surrounding the disputed islands.
What can be done? 

Next week Joe Biden, America’s vice-president, arrives in China. 

The timing may be uncomfortable, but it is fortuitous. 

Mr Biden and Mr Xi know each other well: before Mr Xi became president, he spent five days in America at Mr Biden’s invitation. 

Mr Biden is also going to South Korea and Japan.
America’s “pivot” towards Asia is not taken very seriously there: Mr Obama is seen as distracted by his domestic problems. 

Mr Biden could usefully make clear America’s commitment to guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the region. 

Japan and South Korea, who squabble over petty issues, need to be told to get over their differences. 

As for China, it needs to behave like a responsible world power, not a troublemaker willing to sacrifice 60 years of peace in north-east Asia to score some points by grabbing a few windswept rocks. 

It should accept Japan’s suggestion of a military hotline, similar to the one that is already established between Beijing and Washington.
The region must work harder to build some kind of architecture where regional powers can discuss security. If such a framework had existed in Europe in 1914, things might have turned out differently.

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Seoul Sees Territory Threat in China Defense Zone

South Korea Wary That Beijing Vying for Advantage With Disputed Rock
By ALASTAIR GALE And JEYUP S. KWAAK

South Korean Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo, left, shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Guangzhong, deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, ahead of their talks in Seoul on Thursday. 

SEOUL—South Korea's forceful response to China's new air-defense zone despite otherwise warming ties reflects concern over Beijing's apparent move to tilt a long-running dispute over territorial waters in its favor, officials and analysts in Seoul said.
On Thursday, Seoul confirmed that a South Korean military plane had flown into the new Chinese zone on Tuesday without giving prior warning to Beijing, a day after the U.S. challenged the Chinese demarcation with two B-52 bombers.
South Korea also called for China to redraw its zone at high-level defense talks on Thursday and, after the request was rejected, said it would consider extending its own air-defense zone. 

Seoul says it will send further flights into the Chinese zone without advance notice.
The assertive stance contrasts with South Korea's initial response to China's declaration of the zone on Saturday. Seoul expressed concern but said then the issue would be resolved through dialogue.

A senior South Korean government official said that the more muscular approach was driven by Seoul's wish to reassert its claims over contested territorial waters within China's new zone, primarily an area of ocean around a submerged rock claimed by both Beijing and Seoul.
The rock, known internationally as Socotra Rock, and Ieodo in Korea, has been the subject of a dispute running for decades. 

The rock, northeast of Shanghai and southwest of the Korean island of Jeju, is one point of disagreement in a bigger dispute about the drawing of the countries' respective exclusive economic zones, or EEZ.
The rock, around 15 feet below sea level, lies in an overlapping section of the countries' EEZs. 

Under United Nations guidelines, a country has rights over use of marine resources in an EEZ within 200 nautical miles from its shores—but in case multiple countries' zones overlap, they must negotiate the maritime border.
Beijing and Seoul have met to discuss the issue 16 times previously without reaching consensus.

In 2003, South Korea completed the construction of a marine research center on the rock, including a helicopter landing pad.
A spokesman for South Korea's defense ministry the country's navy and coast guards conduct routine surveillance with aircraft around Ieodo about once or twice a week on average. 

The senior government official said Tuesday's military flight into China's claimed air-defense zone was made to demonstrate South Korea's jurisdiction over the waters around the rock.
On Monday, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry said there was no dispute over the rock and the issue would be resolved through dialogue.
South Korea's shift from its initially restrained response highlights the domestic pressure it faces with regards to territorial sovereignty, said Kim Han-kwon, director of the Center for China Policy at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank.
Though the Chinese air-defense zone isn't set under international law—and has no impact on territory—South Korean politicians and media have treated China's move as an incursion, helping drive a stronger reaction from the government, Mr. Kim said.
"None of the countries (involved in the regional dispute) can step back at this point" or risk losing face, he said.
In addition to the dispute over the rock, South Korea has protested China's move to create 3,000 square kilometers of overlap in the two countries' air-defense zones in the East China Sea. 

After a senior Chinese military official rejected South Korea's demand for Beijing to redraw its zone, his South Korea counterpart said Seoul may increase its own zone, potentially creating further overlap.
The spokesman for the defense ministry in Seoul said the issue of extending South Korea's air-defense zone was under review but declined to provide further details about where it might be increased.
The dispute marks a sharp turn after months of progress in developing closer political and economic ties between Beijing and Seoul. 

During a state visit to Beijing by South Korean President Park Geun-hye in June, the two countries signed a number of agreements and are in discussions about a bilateral free trade agreement.
Ms. Park's personal interest in the Chinese language and culture has also been warmly received in China. South Korea has prioritized ties with China over Japan, which remains in dispute with Seoul over long-running historical and territorial issues.

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Japan, South Korean military planes defy China's new defense zone

BY TETSUSHI KAJIMOTO AND JU-MIN PARK

Japanese and South Korean military aircraft flew through disputed air space over the East China Sea without informing China, officials said on Thursday, challenging a new Chinese air defense zone that has increased regional tensions and sparked concerns of an unintended clash.
The move came after Tokyo's close ally Washington defied China's demand that airplanes flying through its unilaterally announced zone identify themselves to Chinese authorities, flying two unarmed B-52 bombers over the islands on Tuesday without informing Beijing.
Tensions have ratcheted up since Beijing's weekend announcement of the zone that includes the skies over islands at the heart of a feud between Japan and China, and its demand that planes flying in the area first notify Chinese authorities.
Japan and the United States have sharply criticized the move, which some experts said was aimed not only at chipping away at Tokyo's control of the Senkaku islands, but also at challenging U.S. dominance in the region.
The United States does not take a position on the sovereignty of the islands but recognizes Tokyo's administrative control and has assured Japan that the U.S.-Japan security pact covers them.
The developments are expected to dominate U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Japan, China and South Korea next week.
Also on Thursday, China rejected South Korea's demand for the repeal of the zone, but appeared to soften its demand that commercial aircraft tell its military authorities of any plans to transit the area. 

Japan's two biggest airlines have already begun defying that order.
"The East China Sea Air Defence Identification zone is not aimed at normal international flights. We hope that relevant countries' airlines can proactively cooperate, so there is more order and safety for flights," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said naval ships and patrol planes have been operating in the East China Sea and would continue to do so.
"They are carrying out surveillance activity as before in the East China Sea, including the zone," Suga told a news conference, adding there has been no particular response from China. 

"We are not going to change this (activity) out of consideration to China," he added.

BEIJING REJECTS SEOUL'S DEMAND
A South Korean official also said a navy reconnaissance plane had flown over a submerged rock in the area claimed by both Beijing and Seoul, and that the flights would continue.
The Ieodo rock is controlled by South Korea, which maintains a maritime research station built on it.

Asked about the South Korean flight, Chinese spokesman Qin only said that Beijing was aware of it.
South Korea's reaction to Beijing's weekend declaration has been somewhat muted, reflecting its efforts to forge closer ties with China.
On Thursday, however, Seoul's vice defence minister told a senior Chinese military official that the move to impose the new rules created military tension in the region and called on Beijing to rectify the zone
"The Chinese reaction was that they will not be accepting the (South) Korean side's demand," Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters after talks between Vice Defence Minister Baek Seung-joo and Wang Guanzhong, the deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

Asked if China would heed Japanese calls to revoke the air defence zone, China's Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said Tokyo had implemented its own zone in 1969 and blamed it for raising tensions with its double standards.
Japan says it only requires planes headed for its territorial air space to notify authorities, not those merely transiting through its air defence identification zone.

In the ongoing war of words, the policy panel of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party approved a resolution on Thursday demanding China rescind the new air defence zone, saying the unilateral move reflected "unreasonable expansionism". 

But the resolution dropped a more inflammatory reference to "premodern and imperialist expansionism" contained in an earlier draft.

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China’s Airspace Claim Inflames Ties to South Korea, Too

   

By CHOE SANG-HUN

South Korea’s foreign minister warned on Wednesday that China’s recent attempt to police the sky over a vast area in the East China Sea was worsening tensions in a region already strained by territorial disputes.
China’s so-called air defense identification zone covered not only a group of Japanese islands but also a submerged rock that both China and South Korea want to control.
The dispute over the submerged rock has never been as fierce as China’s dispute over the islands with Japan, but the new air patrol zone drew strong protests from South Korea, threatening to heighten tensions with Beijing.
Seoul said it would not recognize the Chinese zone and would maintain its jurisdictional right to waters around the Ieodo rock.
“The issue of the air defense identification zone is making the already difficult regional situations even more difficult to deal with,” Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se of South Korea said during a defense forum in Seoul on Wednesday.
“We see competition and conflict in the region deepening,” he said.
“Things can take a dramatic turn for the worse if territorial conflicts and historical issues are merged with nationalism.”
Mr. Yun’s comment came a day after two long-range American B-52 bombers flew through the contested airspace, a move seen as a warning by Washington that it would defy what it considered China’s provocative attempt to expand control over airspace in the region.
In recent years, tensions over territorial disputes have grown in the region, a reflection of how contesting claims were never settled satisfactorily at the end of World War II in 1945.
Recently, such conflicts tended to keep South Korea drifting further away from Japan as Seoul appeared to be cozying up more to Beijing.
Seoul and Tokyo, two close American allies, have locked horns over a separate set of islands and over Japan’s treatment of Korean sex slaves for its army during World War II.
South Korea and China recently together angered Tokyo by agreeing to build a monument in China for a Korean nationalist hero who assassinated a former Japanese prime minister in 1909.
But China’s declaration of the expanded air control zone highlighted a potentially volatile dispute between China and South Korea, since it covered Ieodo, a submerged reef south of Jeju, an island off the south coast of South Korea.
Ieodo, which South Korea says it effectively controls, is believed to be surrounded by natural gas and minerals deposits.
Despite fierce protests from environmentalists, South Korea is building a $970 million naval base in Jeju, a home for 20 warships, including submarines, that the navy says will protect shipping lanes in the East China Sea for South Korea’s oil-dependent, export-driven economy as well as enabling it to respond quickly to any dispute with China over the rock.
Under international maritime law, countries cannot claim a submerged rock as territory but can claim the right to control and use waters and natural resources around it.
Both China and South Korea claim such rights over the reef.
Currently, the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Administration manages a research station built on the rock.
“The issue over Ieodo is not a territorial one but a matter of the exclusive economic zone, as it is not an island but a submerged rock,” Cho Tai-young, a spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday.

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