Time To Get Tough With China

Vice President Biden cooled tensions in his talks with Chinese leaders, but many in Asia and the U.S. now question whether that’s the right course.

By Leslie H. Gelb

“We’re being too soft on China”—such are the increasingly audible whispers of an ever mounting number of China’s neighbors and U.S. foreign policy experts. 

They are still mostly whispering because of the enormity of such a change in policy direction. And they certainly don’t wish to trigger crises. 

But they do feel that the U.S. needs to get tougher with Beijing. 

To them, China unilaterally asserts its rights and demands, doesn’t budge, wears everyone down, waits and waits until everyone shrugs and goes along. 

Vice President Joe Biden handled his visit with Chinese rulers in the traditional manner: that is, he was strong in defending American values and concerns, but always far short of confrontation. And Chinese leaders mistook his care as weakness. 

Perhaps they’ve seen this as weakness all along.
Or as Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China, put it: “The Chinese do not shy from provocation and count on eventual foreign forebearance. It is time to parry this pattern and be willing to risk some dustups."
Such commentary on the Biden visit did not rise above murmurs here and there. 

Those pushing for a tougher line toward China realize such a policy shift takes time, and can’t be decided upon in the space of a week or so, the time it took to digest China’s imposition of its new Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ over the Japanese islands in the East China Sea. 

If Washington is to adopt a tougher stance toward Beijing, it needs a lot of methodical calculation. 

And U.S. diplomats would have to ensure beforehand that Asian nations would follow suit, so that Washington did not string itself out alone. 

The Obama administration is not near such a policy departure. 

And so, Biden deftly carried out his prescribed paces, perhaps disturbing no one greatly beyond the Japanese. 

Japan is less and less inclined to let Beijing push it around. In this regard, they’re out in front of the U.S. government, but they are not alone.

Many Asian and American policy experts were quite unhappy about China’s new ADIZ—and with the Obama administration’s quick acceptance of China’s right to do so. 

Washington alerted U.S. commercial airlines (not military aircraft) to comply in order to avoid mishap. 

There was good reason, however, not to do so. 

Washington acknowledges the right to establish ADIZ’s. 

But by U.S. policy, commercial aircraft flying through such zones need identify themselves only if they intend to enter Chinese airspace. 

More to the point, Beijing’s new ADIZ was announced without warning or consultation over an unusually large area, and an area that was in hot dispute with Japan. 

Japan and South Korea did not go along with the new China ADIZ, and the White House or State Department should have coordinated the U.S. response with these and other countries.
It’s not a stretch to assume that Chinese leaders took the U.S. response as caving in to their excessive demands. 

Tokyo certainly came to that precise conclusion. 

Apparently, Biden made no hard line effort to walk this cat back in Beijing. 

Instead, he seems to have asked his Chinese counterparts simply not to “enforce” the new ADIZ rules. 

Later in his Asia trip, in South Korea, the U.S. position appeared to have hardened, with a U.S. briefer saying that the U.S. and others did not accept China’s ADIZ. 

In the familiar refrain of diplomats, only time will tell.
The new ADIZ is only the latest in a long line of lamentations about Chinese treatment of American interests. 

There’s the cyberwarfare against U.S. defense industries. 

There’s Chinese flagrant violation of intellectual property rights. 

There’s the near total resistance to opening up Chinese internal markets to fair competition and to letting outsiders own a majority share of businesses. 

There’s strong resistance to accepting the WTO trade rules on the grounds that though China is an economic juggernaut, it’s really a “developing country” and thus not subject to the same rules as America, Japan, Germany, et al. 

There’s the constant intimidation of American journalists and news organizations. 

Biden did note the latter publicly as a matter of American values. 

Did Beijing even notice?

Asian nations certainly feel Beijing has been pushing them around, increasingly. 

That’s why they pressured the Obama team to “pivot” or “rebalance” its policy and resources from Europe and the Mideast to Asia and the Pacific, a course already favored by the Obama team. 

To be sure, and at the same, Asian leaders worry about being too closely associated with a tougher U.S. They want Americans to be tougher, but they don’t want Beijing to blame them for it. (It’s the old story with America’s friends and allies.)
Then, there’s the question that troubles all serious policy makers—exactly what leverage does Washington actually hold over Beijing? 

No military expert dreams of challenging China’s military power on the Asian mainland. The manpower gap is insurmountable. 

But at sea and on the coastlands, the U.S. Navy and Air Force remain clearly superior. China’s knows all this. 

But the last thing anyone desires is a military confrontation. 

There’s no telling where this would lead. 

By the same token, however, China can’t simply be allowed to make its own rules at sea by asserting its unilateral rights and dispatching ships and fighter planes to enforce them. 

So far, China has been doing the asserting in both the East and South China seas, resource rich areas, much to the dismay of the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan.
But the real leverage between the U.S. and China comes down to economic horsepower. 

However much military strength is needed, and it is, policy makers understand full well that power in the region stems from domestic economic strength and vitality, plus trade and investment power. 

China’s economy still marches upward and has already surpassed Japan’s. 

The American economy is limping along. 

Congress hasn’t passed a budget in six years. It regularly brings the nation to debt default. 

It won’t increase funds for physical and intellectual infrastructure, where America is clearly falling behind. 

If China or anyone else, for that matter, is going to pay attention to America’s wishes and demands, Congress will have to stop acting like a Banana Republic. 

The Tea Baggers say they want a strong America; they’re destroying it.
Ambassador Lord provided this perspective: “We need a firmer posture toward Beijing which means getting our domestic political and economic acts together, investing in the future; giving our Asian rebalancing more heft by successfully concluding the critical Pacific trade pact; and helping to reconcile our two most important Asian allies, Japan and South Korea."
Stapleton Roy, another former U.S. ambassador to China, who opposes the tougher line, put his case rather pithily: “You talk about getting tough on China,” he chuckled, “We first should get tough on ourselves.”

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The US Waffles on China’s Air Defense Zone

State Department concerns appear to trump military ones
Asia Sentinel

A computer screens display a map showing the outline of China's air defense zone in the East China late last month.

Asian nations looking for US protection in the face of concerns about China’s hegemonic designs on east and Southeast Asia are left baffled by Washington’s response to China’s controversial declaration of an air defense zone covering most of the East China Sea.
The first US reaction, clearly driven by highest level military concerns, was to send military aircraft through the zone without notifying the Chinese authorities. 

Japan and Korea did likewise and Japan’s civilian aircraft similarly ignored this great leap forward in China’s de facto claims over airspace close to the territorial waters of Japan and South Korea.
But since then the US, seemingly driven by a State Department that often appears to place short- term relations with China ahead of longer-term strategic questions, has adopted a somewhat ambiguous posture. The visit to the region by US Vice-President Joe Biden could have been used to condemn the Chinese action unequivocally and bolster Japanese and South Korean confidence in US determination to stand by them in rejecting Chinese presumptions.
As it happened, however, the US seemed set on avoiding provoking China into yet more aggressive claims – even though it was China’s announcement of the zone shortly before Biden’s visit, which was the immediate provocation.
Much of the western media also appeared to portray the air zone issue as simply an extension of China’s dispute with Japan over the Senkaku islands when even a glance at a map of the Chinese self-proclaimed zone shows it encompasses almost the whole airspace over the East China sea, not just the southwestern portion close to the Senkakus. 

Such misinterpretation must be music to China’s ears.
While in Beijing, Biden is reported to have told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US rejects the zone claim and looks to China to ease tensions by effectively not doing anything to enforce its claims. 

It could, for example, not do anything about plans, civilian or military, which fail to provide their flight plans to the Chinese authorities. 

Nonetheless, the claims are now on the record and having made them, President Xi may come under nationalist and populist pressure to try to enforce them.
The US position has clearly been weakened by its advising its own airlines to file their flight plans with China – unlike Japan. 

Not surprisingly, Japan has not been pleased with this failure to back its own position of declining to provide civilian flight information to the extent China demands. 

The US has explained its action by reference to the safety needs of civilian aircraft. 

However, that implies that China represents a risk to civilian aircraft which do not comply. 

Clearly China is not going to start shooting down commercial aircraft so the US response is in effect surrender to a theoretical threat. 

Stouter hearts would have called China’s bluff.
Many countries declare air defense zones which go well beyond their territorial waters as well as flight control zones for the safe operation of civilian aircraft. 

But these have no formal international standing and require neighboring countries to cooperate rather than compete in demanding exclusive rights.
The vast extension of China’s zone could be seen, most worryingly, as a preliminary move to be followed at some future date with attempts to enforce it first of all in the vicinity of the Senkakus, islands which the US recognizes as Japanese. 

It is also noteworthy how close the zone goes to Japan’s territorial waters in the vicinity of the Ryukyu Islands, and of Okinawa, with its US bases in particular.
In another direction, next on China’s agenda could be declaration of a similar zone above the South China sea, following the infamous nine-dash line of its claims there which take it almost up to the territorial waters of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia, and very close to Indonesia’s Natuna islands. 

China’s ambassador in Manila Ma Keqing was quoted as saying that China had the right to set up a similar zone over the South China Sea.
Exactly how that “right” is defined has not been made clear. 

But if such a right exists, presumably other countries, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, have similar rights to air defense zones extending close to China’s coast and its military airfields.
Given China’s world view and its history of expansion over most of the past 500 years (only during the period 1840-1945 was it on the defensive, against the west and Japan) it is hard to predict how far its ambitions now go. 

But Asian neighbors might like to see the US put more backbone into its response if they are to believe that its “tilt” towards Asia and the centrality of the western Pacific to US long-term strategic interests.

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U.S., China Signal Retreat From Standoff Over Air-Defense Zone

By PETER NICHOLAS in Washington, JEREMY PAGE in Beijing and YUKA HAYASHI in Tokyo

The U.S. and China both signaled they are backing away from a confrontation over China's new air-defense zone, with both nations moving toward an understanding that the zone won't be policed in ways that threaten the region or endanger the lives of pilots and passengers.
U.S. officials insist the defense zone established by China on Nov. 23 over disputed islands in the East China Sea is illegitimate. 

Some said privately that they don't expect China to roll it back.
Vice President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for more than five hours in Beijing on Wednesday to discuss the air-defense zone and other issues.
A focus of Mr. Biden in those meetings was to define the "rules of engagement" between China and other nations in the region to prevent a calamity, said a former national security aide to Mr. Biden who spoke to administration staffers on the trip.
"I don't think it's going to disappear," said the former aide, Julianne Smith. 

Having already set up the zone, "it would be really hard for [the Chinese] to back out of this," she said.
"The bottom line right now is doing all we can on the margins to ensure the safety of any of the aircraft that finds itself in this vicinity," said Ms. Smith, a senior vice president at Beacon Global Strategies.
Mr. Biden arrived in South Korea on Thursday for another round of talks aimed at defusing tensions in the region, grappling with Seoul's plans to expand its own air-defense zone in a move that stands to intensify animosities in the volatile region. 

South Korean officials will meet on Friday to finalize plans for the new zone.
Obama administration officials reiterated on Thursday that the U.S. doesn't accept China's zone and isn't changing U.S. military operations to accommodate the Chinese.
Calling China's actions "dangerous and provocative," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the zone Thursday that "we don't accept it and we call on China not to implement it."
Still, there was little talk of China formally rescinding the air-defense identification zone, or ADIZ. 

A defense official echoed the U.S. position that China shouldn't "implement" the zone—statements that could suggest the U.S. wants China to halt steps toward adopting the stringent regulations Beijing originally announced.
The U.S. position, coupled with China's elastic interpretation of its own rules so far, appeared to reduce the immediate threat of the standoff widening into a military clash that could embroil the U.S.
China on Thursday asked the U.S. to respect the zone, saying it complied with international norms. 

But China added that it was willing to discuss "technical issues" with other countries on flight safety in the region.
Beijing has also clarified requirements that aircraft file reports or face unspecified defensive measures.
China's defense ministry, which issued the rules, now says the military won't shoot down aircraft in the zone, and will instead monitor and identify them, only sending up fighter jets to track them if they are considered a threat.
Defense experts said that interpretation of the rules is relatively close to how other countries, including the U.S. and Japan, enforce air-defense zones, which are established unilaterally and aren't regulated by an international body.
"Here we have our ally, Japan, saying the zone should be undone, but that's a position the U.S. is unlikely to take," said M. Taylor Fravel, an expert on China and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

"The real question is what you do to enforce it, so that's why you see the U.S. increasingly focusing on the procedures." 

He added that "there's been an evolution" in the U.S. position.
The U.S. response has disappointed officials in Japan, which has called for the zone to be withdrawn. 

Still, Japanese officials said Thursday they understand the U.S. predicament and remain in lockstep over basic security principles.
Some congressional Republicans also are unhappy with the White House. 

"You've got to give the other side notice right off the bat that there is going to be a cost to them for being so aggressive," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.), a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

Administration officials "certainly aren't projecting strength now that we're on the edge of a crisis."
The discrepancy between the U.S. and Japanese positions highlights the challenge facing the U.S. as it tries to reassure its closest traditional allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, while adapting to China's rapidly expanding influence.
The Obama administration has pledged to refocus military and other resources on Asia. But Asian officials expressed doubts about U.S. staying power.
Mr. Biden in his meetings with Mr. Xi repeated that the U.S. didn't recognize the new zone, but never demanded that China rescind it—the position Tokyo has taken since China first unveiled the plan last month.
U.S. officials have said in recent days that their main concern is China's stipulation that the rules apply to any aircraft in the zone, even if it is not planning to enter China's national airspace.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing this week that the international norm was for pilots to report to local authorities only if intending to enter its airspace.
"So it wasn't the declaration of the ADIZ that actually was destabilizing," he said. 

"It was their assertion that they would cause all aircraft entering the ADIZ to report regardless of whether they were intending to enter into the sovereign airspace of China. And that is destabilizing."
That appeared to be a departure from earlier U.S. statements, which declared the establishment of the zone itself as a destabilizing attempt to change the status quo in the region.
Defense officials said Thursday that the Pentagon's position hadn't changed.
"The U.S. does not recognize this ADIZ and urges China to not implement it," said a defense official. 

"U.S. military flights have and will continue to operate in the region and we will not recognize the ADIZ."
Chuck Hagel, the U.S. defense secretary, was asked at the same briefing whether he thought China should "roll back" the zone.
"It's not that the ADIZ itself is new or unique," Mr. Hagel said. 

"The biggest concern that we have is how it was done so unilaterally and so immediately without any consultation or international consultation."
Officials in Tokyo say that Japan and the U.S. maintain a unified policy in their response to the ADIZ. 

They also deny that Washington has changed its stance to accept Beijing's new policy in effect.
"The U.S. and Japan reaffirmed that China's unilateral change shall not be accepted and that we will continue to work closely together," said Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary.
However, Japanese officials say in private that the statements made by Mr. Biden and other U.S. officials over the past few days have fallen short of what they had hoped to hear under an ideal scenario.
Neither has the U.S. criticized China specifically for its decision to include the islands at the center of its bilateral dispute with Japan in the new zone, even as they used expressions such as "escalatory" or "destabilizing" to describe the move.
Japanese officials say the inclusion of the islands is the biggest issue they have with the Chinese zone.
"China takes advantage of other countries when they show their weakness and grabs things away from them one after another," said Makoto Iokibe, a former president of the National Defense Academy. 

"The U.S. shouldn't tolerate the attempt to change the status quo by use of force. If they do, it's wrong."
Japanese officials have also privately complained about U.S regulators' decision to urge its private carriers to comply with China's new rule and file their flight plans. 

The move has put Tokyo in an awkward position as it has forbid its own airlines from doing so.
Still, Japanese officials are quick to point out that the U.S. and Japan are in agreement over basic principles on regional security and in their mutual commitment to their six-decade-old alliance.

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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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U.S. Split With Japan on China Zone Puts Carriers in Spat

By David Lerman and Chris Cooper

The U.S. and Japanese governments’ split over how commercial airlines should operate in China’s self-declared air-defense zone has put carriers at the center of an escalating political dispute.
The U.S. State Department has urged airlines to notify Chinese authorities before flying through the zone, while Japan pressed its carriers to stop supplying such flight data. 

China created the zone over an area that includes islands in the East China Sea claimed by both the Asian nations.
Tension over territorial disputes with neighbors has in the past drawn Japan closer to the U.S., which maintains troops and airbases around the archipelago. 

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will seek clarification from Chinese leaders on their intentions in imposing the zone when he visits Japan, China and South Korea this week.
“Policy execution based on cooperation between Japan and the U.S. is the most important thing, especially for the aviation industry,” said Haruo Ushiba, a director at Japan Aviation Management Research in Tokyo. “This rare crack in the U.S.-Japan alliance must be carefully examined.”
ANA Holdings Inc. and Japan Airlines Co. have stopped sharing flight plans with Chinese authorities after earlier agreeing to do so as Japan denounced China’s move.
The U.S. advisory to carriers came as Japan raised the dispute over the zone at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. 

A Japanese government representative told the UN agency that the zone could threaten the order and safety of international aviation and requested a review, according to the country’s foreign ministry.

Biden Talks
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters yesterday that he would discuss the government’s response to the new Chinese air-defense zone with Biden, Kyodo News reported.
United Continental Holdings Inc., the biggest U.S. carrier, will continue its usual policy of sharing flight data with China, according to Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based airline. 

American Airlines is also complying with the Chinese requirement, spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said.
ANA said it was maintaining its policy of not informing Chinese authorities while flying through the new defense zone, spokesman Ryosei Nomura said by telephone today. 

The carrier will reconsider its position if urged by the Japanese government to do so, he said.

Military Penetration
The State Department’s notice emerged hours after the U.S. military disclosed that it has been flying daily through the disputed area without providing notice to China’s authorities. 

That disclosure Nov. 29 by a U.S. defense official indicates that U.S. flight activity in the area, where China has sought to exert control, is more extensive than was previously known.
“It’s very important the U.S. signal to the Chinese that we’re not going to be bullied and that we’re going to adhere to our commitments,” which include a defense treaty with Japan, said Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2005 to 2008.
The Pentagon had acknowledged a flight by two unarmed B-52 bombers through the air zone last week. 

The defense official, who asked not to be named discussing military operations, wouldn’t specify the type of aircraft used in subsequent flights or say whether any of them are armed.
China for a second day Nov. 29 sent fighter planes into the air zone. 

The situation “holds the real potential for a crisis,” said Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

‘Provocative’ Behavior
China’s “provocative” behavior toward its neighbors in the region “now becomes a very prominent issue for the visit,” said Burns, who’s now a professor of international relations at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Biden will convey U.S. concerns about China’s air zone and seek clarification from Chinese leaders on their intentions, according to an administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because the talks will be private.
Biden is “well-positioned to play a calming role hopefully to defuse this crisis, in a way that is supportive of our primary friend, the government of Japan,” Burns said in an interview.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo today that the U.S. “doesn’t accept China’s demands on the area.” 

He also said there is no change in the government’s decision to forbid airlines from providing flight data.

‘Emergency Measures’
“We will continue to work closely with the U.S. and have discussions as Biden arrives in Japan today,” Suga said.
China announced the air-defense identification zone effective Nov. 23 and said its military will take “defensive emergency measures” if aircraft enter the area without reporting flight plans or otherwise identifying themselves.
Japan and South Korea also have flown military aircraft through the air zone in recent days, testing China’s resolve to control a swath of the East China Sea that is central to a territorial dispute.
South Korea advised its domestic carriers to stick with current practice as the government doesn’t accept China’s zone, Yonhap News reported yesterday, citing an official at the transport ministry.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called China’s air zone “a destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region” and warned that it “increases the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculations.”

Joint Statement
The U.S. and Japan will issue a joint statement after Abe and Biden meet this week that calls on China to retract the zone, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, without citing a source. 

The statement will call the zone a dangerous experiment that unilaterally changes the situation in the East China Sea, the newspaper reported.
Japan and the U.S. also plan to step up air surveillance in the East China Sea, with Japan stationing E-2C airborne early-warning aircraft at the Naha base in the Okinawa region and expanding the use of unmanned Global Hawk aircraft, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Nov. 29, without citing a source.
South Korea is considering expanding its own air-defense zone in response to China’s move, Wee Yong Sub, spokesman for the Defense Ministry said in Seoul.
“This is one of the most serious challenges ever posed by China to freedom of movement both on the sea and in the sky and will affect very seriously the forward deployment of the United States,” Tomohiko Taniguchi, an adviser to Japan’s Abe, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
The State Department last month recommended that U.S. carriers take all steps they consider necessary for safe operation in the zone.
“We are filing our flight plans with China as we normally do,” United’s McCarthy said in an e-mail last week.
Hagel called Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera last week to assure the U.S. ally of its support. Hagel praised Japan “for exercising appropriate restraint” and “pledged to consult closely with Japan on efforts to avoid unintended incidents,” according to a Pentagon statement.

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