China's ADIZ undermines regional stability

By Bonnie S Glaser

China established an "East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ)" effective as of 10 am on November 23. 

China's Ministry of National Defense also announced Aircraft Identification Rules for the ADIZ, which include a warning that "defensive emergency measures" would be adopted to respond to aircraft that refuse to follow the instructions.
The zone overlaps the existing ADIZ of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. China's ADIZ also covers the Japanese Senkaku Islands.

One day following the announcement, China conducted two aerial patrols over the area; its aircraft were intercepted by Japan Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) fighter jets.
All nations have the right to establish reasonable conditions of entry into their territory. 

An ADIZ is a declaration of a perimeter within which unidentified aircraft can be intercepted and prevented from illegally proceeding to enter national airspace. 

It serves essentially as a national defense boundary for aerial incursions. 

There are no international rules or laws that determine the size of an ADIZ. 

Over 20 nations have an ADIZ, including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan in the West Pacific. 

ADIZs typically are much more extensive then a country's territorial airspace.
Why did China establish an ADIZ? 

China's PLA spokesman claimed that its action is "a necessary measure taken by China in exercising its self-defense right," and that "it is not directed against any specific country or target." 

However, the decision to declare an East China Sea ADIZ is likely aimed at strengthening Beijing's claim over the Japanese islands in the East China Sea. 

This move follows on China's September 2012 submission to the United Nations of baselines to demarcate a territorial sea around the islands.
China may also be responding to recent Japanese warnings that it reserves the right to shoot down unmanned drones that pose a threat to Japanese airspace. 

By creating an ADIZ that includes the Senkaku Islands, Beijing may believe it has established a basis for challenging and, if necessary, taking action against Japanese aircraft operating in this zone. 

The ADIZ may also signal a Chinese intention to increase flights in the territorial airspace around the disputed islands as a demonstration of its sovereignty and jurisdictional claim. 

China has only flown an aircraft in the territorial airspace around the island once, in February 2013, when a civilian maritime surveillance Y-12 aircraft entered the airspace.
Beijing may also seek to collect and publish data on the number of times that Chinese jets scramble to intercept Japanese fighters that enter into its ADIZ. 

Japan already publishes data on "intrusions" by Chinese and Russian aircraft; China may see benefits in demonstrating to its domestic audience that the party and military are doing their utmost to defend Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity.
China's action exacerbates tensions in ongoing disputes and creating friction in the region where none or little existed. 

It further increases tension in the territorial row between China and Japan at a time when that bilateral relationship is already severely strained. 

Moreover, it heightens the risk of an accident. 

There is a very large overlap between China's ADIZ and Japan's ADIZ. 

When aircraft from either country fly in this overlapping area, the other side is likely to scramble fighters and intercept the intruder. 

If intercepts are not conducted safely and in accordance with international norms, a collision is possible. Recall that in 2001 a Chinese fighter jet that was conducting aggressive intercepts collided with a US surveillance plane, which resulted in the Chinese pilot's death, the forced landing of the US EP-3 on Hainan island where its 24-member crew was held for 11 days, and a crisis in US-China relations.
China's ADIZ also encompasses portions of Ieodo Island and Jeju Island, which are part of South Korea, and overlaps with the Korean ADIZ in a wide swath that is 20 kilometers wide and 115 km long. 

The South Korean government expressed its regret about the Chinese government's decision. 

The newly announced ADIZ also overlaps with Taiwan's ADIZ, prompting the government in Taipei to issue a statement that included a pledge that Taiwan's armed forces would ensure the safety of the country's airspace, and urged all parties to "avoid actions that could escalate confrontation in the region."
Moreover, China's Aircraft Identification Rules make no distinction between aircraft flying parallel with China's coastline through the ADIZ and those flying toward China's territorial airspace. 

Secretary of State Kerry highlighted this issue in his statement, saying that the US "does not apply its ADIZ procedures to foreign aircraft not intending to enter US national airspace," implying that the US would not recognize China's claimed right to take action against aircraft that are not intending to enter its national airspace. 

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stated that the US would not change the way it conducts military operations in the region.
Some Chinese may believe that aggressive intercepts against a Japanese aircraft in air space near the Senkakus would not provoke a US response since Washington is neutral on the issue of sovereignty over the islands. 

Secretary Hagel's statement reaffirming that Article V of the US-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the disputed islands is important in this regard and should prevent Chinese miscalculation.
At one fell swoop, Beijing's ADIZ decision has injected new problems into its ties with South Korea, Taiwan and the US, further soured relations with Japan, and frightened smaller nations in Southeast Asia. 

It appears that Xi Jinping, who by all accounts has emerged stronger from the recently held Chinese Communist Party Third Plenum, is willing to fan the flames of nationalism so he can ensure the party's popularity as he tackles economic reform at home.

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Japan Takes Airspace Issue to U.N. Agency

By MARTIN FACKLER

NIIGATA, Japan — Seeking broader international support for opposing China’s claims to airspace over the East China Sea, Japan has asked the United Nations agency that oversees civil aviation to look into whether the newly created Chinese air defense zone could endanger civilian airliners, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
The ministry said that it submitted a proposal for the agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, to examine whether China’s move could threaten the order and safety of international aviation in the area. Though the organization can make only nonbinding recommendations, Japan appears to be hoping that the heightened international scrutiny will force China to back off its declared intent to control the airspace with military measures if necessary.
China’s new “air defense identification zone” covers a broad section of sea that includes Japanese islands, and overlaps with a zone claimed by Japan since the late 1960s. 

Japan views the zone, which China declared last week, as a new move to gain control of the Senkaku islands.
China has said its new zone would not affect civilian air traffic, and was aimed instead at stopping Japanese military aircraft from entering airspace that it says rightfully belongs to China. 

However, China says that all aircraft, including commercial flights, must submit a flight plan before entering the zone.
While the United States military continues to fly into the zone without notifying China, Obama administration officials said Friday that they were advising American airlines to comply with the Chinese requirement in order to ensure their safety.

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Spat over air space lost on ordinary Chinese

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Captured US jets and wrecked U2 spy planes, permanently grounded at the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution in west Beijing, offer a stark reminder of the brutal history of the 20th century.
Yet current geopolitical tensions, sparked by China’s unilateral declaration of an “air defence identification zone” over much of the East China Sea, appear to be lost on today’s visitors to the vast museum hangers with their detritus of war.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about; I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Mr Jie, 40, who was visiting the museum on Sunday from nearby Hebei Province, when asked what he thought of China’s new air defence zone, unveiled by China on November 23.
The new zone’s significance may be lost on Mr Jie but it has rattled China’s neighbours as it overlaps with one established by Japan in the 1960s and because it covers the Japanese Senkaku islands.
Two 19-year-old Beijing men at the museum, asking to remain anonymous, said they had heard about the new zone from state media reports but that those reports lacked detail and had not explained much of the background.
“I’m not so sure why we have set this zone up; maybe it has something to do with the Senkaku islands?” one of the young men speculated, correctly.
Their hazy grasp of the facts is understandable. 

In stark contrast to previous rounds of territorial conflict with Japan or smaller neighbours in the South China Sea, China’s tightly-controlled state media have largely airbrushed the issue from the news agenda.
As a consequence, there have been none of the mass outpourings of anti-Japanese or anti-foreign venom that spilled over into large, government-sanctioned street protests late last year after Tokyo bought some of the uninhabited islands from their private Japanese owner.
On Sunday afternoon, the issue of the new air defence zone did not even rank in the top 30 most popular topics on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which is blocked by China’s “great firewall” censorship regime.
In the sub-category of current affairs, the topic only made it to number seven on the most popular list. Indeed, the most popular topic in the Weibo current affairs sub-category was a series of newly published details about a domestic aircraft crash that happened in 2010.
Chinese netizens’ lukewarm interest in the subject reflects Beijing’s decision to keep the issue for the most part out of the public eye.
Employees of popular online news sites say they received telephone instructions from propaganda authorities ordering them not to publish any reports on the matter apart from short factual pieces issued by centrally-controlled state media.
An explicit ban was issued on any non-sanctioned reports mentioning the US decision to send B-52 bombers through the newly-established zone.
Over the weekend, state media were far more focused on reporting the imminent launch of China’s first moon landing probe and on Friday, China’s foreign ministry spokesman said the new air defence zone “will not cause regional tensions”, according to state media.
On Sunday, the official Xinhua news agency did report that US airlines have, on advice from the US government, agreed to China’s demands to provide all flight information for aircraft passing through the new zone.
But the report did not mention that the major airlines of Japan and South Korea are refusing to provide that information to Beijing, following instructions from their governments.
Analysts say Beijing appears confident the issue will blow over quickly, leaving it in a stronger position than before since many commercial airlines from other countries have agreed to provide flight information and thereby implicitly acknowledge its claims to the disputed territory.
Even on the diplomatic circuit the issue has had a limited airing.
On Friday, as several uniformed officers of the People’s Liberation Army stood shoulder to shoulder with Japanese and American diplomats at a buffet lunch hosted by the Japanese embassy in Beijing to celebrate the birthday of the Japanese Emperor, there was no hint that their countries could be one mid-air collision away from armed conflict.
Meanwhile, back at the Beijing military museum on Sunday, 26-year-old Beijing native Song Guotao made clear that the relative apathy of ordinary Chinese people towards the latest standoff has nothing to do with a more tolerant attitude toward their neighbours.
“This is our territory and Japan is truly a barbaric country,” he said.
Mr Song said he had learnt a lot about the current tensions over the air defence zone thanks to his searches on the internet rather than from state media.

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Britain wins little reward from China in retreat on Tibet

European countries think Cameron mishandled ties with Dalai Lama

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

David Cameron meets the Dalai Lama at the Houses of Parliament

Britain has “sold the store”, “surrendered” and “totally capitulated” in its efforts to get back into the good graces of the Chinese leadership, in the words of several senior Beijing-based diplomats from Asia and Europe.
Diplomats can be a catty bunch and there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy from the representatives of countries that have themselves gone to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with an increasingly powerful China.
But, as Prime Minister David Cameron arrives in Beijing on Monday to begin his first state visit in more than two years, it is hard to avoid the perception that the UK, like most other countries, is struggling to come to terms with a more assertive China.
British diplomats insist the UK’s position has not changed on human rights or on Tibet but European diplomats and human rights groups say London has clearly downgraded these issues over the past year. What Britain has got in return is not entirely clear.
The UK was thrown into the diplomatic deep-freeze in May 2012 after Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, posed for smiling photos with the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, during his trip to London.
China reviles the Nobel peace prize-winning lama as a “wolf in monk’s robes” who is bent on Tibetan independence. 

Beijing views any official meetings with him by foreign leaders as part of a Western plot to split China.
The feeling among other European countries, in particular, is that the UK mishandled the initial meeting with the Tibetan leader and then gave in too quickly and completely in its efforts to make up with Beijing.
Mr Cameron’s decision earlier this year to emphasise Britain’s opposition to Tibetan independence in the House of Commons made the UK look weak when it did not yield an immediate thaw. 

Subsequent lobbying to arrange official visits before the end of the year looked over-eager.
The fact that trade and investment between the UK and China did not seem to be affected in the wake of the Dalai Lama meeting has only added to the perception that London is trying too hard.

British exports to China have doubled to £15.9bn in the past five years and last year, even after the May meeting, the UK ranked fourth as a destination for outbound Chinese investment, behind only Hong Kong, the US and Kazakhstan.

That was up from the UK’s position at No 8 in 2011 and No 21 in 2010.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, European diplomats say that British euroscepticism has made it less able to come to a unified position with other European countries when dealing with China on issues such as meeting the Dalai Lama.
That leaves the UK exposed to more pressure from Beijing, which is adept at exploiting rifts and rivalries within the EU.
A wider question can be asked in all of this that has been around for as long as liberal democratic political systems have had foreign policies: does it do anyone any good to lecture authoritarian regimes on universal values?
To Chinese ears, something is faintly ridiculous when the UK, which China blames for the 19th century opium wars, colonialism and “100 years of humiliation”, comes to Beijing with sermons for communist officials about human rights.
As Boris Johnson, London mayor, put it in his inimitable way during a visit to China in October: “I don’t walk into a meeting and say, ‘I say, you chaps, how’s freedom doing?’.”
The business community looks at the potential opportunities in China’s enormous market and asks how useful British finger-wagging is.
“If defending the rights of the Dalai Lama puts the UK behind the French and other countries in the relative pecking order in the eyes of the new Chinese leadership, then that is a big mistake and very depressing for Britain,” one Western financier told the FT this week.
The answer, of course, is that abandoning the defence of universal values in the hopes of more market access or better political relations is an even less effective way of earning the respect of China’s leaders or anyone else.
To be fair, it is not just the UK that appears increasingly reluctant to bring up such issues in the face of China’s growing market demand, power and influence.
Given Beijing’s willingness and ability to inflict diplomatic and economic pain, it is quite likely that the ageing Dalai Lama will never again be granted an audience with a European leader in his lifetime.

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Barack Obama Throws Japan Under Bus – Capitulates To Chinese Demands

By Ulsterman

The mainstream media gave much coverage to the fact the U.S. military recently sent two B-52 bombers across a stretch of disputed air space that China has recently lay claim to – an aggressive move aimed directly at both Japan and America. 

What these media reports failed to include, was the backdoor capitulation the Obama administration did at nearly the same time it was pretending to stand up to the Chinese. 

It was an act of dangerous capitulation that not will not only embolden China, but throws longtime ally Japan under the wheels of the Obama bus.

Barack Obama bowing to China’s president.
If you do a bit of hunting and pecking reader, you can find a few reports outlining what the Obama administration did regarding the China conflict.
Japan instructed its commercial airlines to ignore China’s claim on the disputed airspace, telling them NOT to ask for permission from the Chinese government before flying through it. 

This was done to prevent any legitimization of the Chinese claims they control the airspace.
The Obama government though, did the exact opposite, instructing American commercial flights to get approval from the Chinese government first. 

The administration will likely claim this is to ensure the safety of those flights. 

What it has done though is exactly what the Japanese government did not want – it legitimizes the Chinese claim on the disputed airspace.
It is an outright capitulation by the American government that favors the Chinese at the expense of the Japanese. 

It heightens tensions, not alleviates them, and further, places those Japanese commercial flights at greater risk.
Dangerous, ignorant, and incompetent are all terms completely at home within the Obama foreign policy. Make no mistake, behind closed doors the Japanese government is seething, as this is yet another example of the current United States government proving itself utterly devoid of trust and mutual cooperation with its longstanding allies.

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China’s gradual expansion in the East China Sea poses a challenge for Japan

By Chico Harlan

Rocking the boat: Ships from China's State Oceanic Administration, the Japan Coast Guard and boats carrying members of a Japanese nationalist group sail in Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands. In the foreground, a Japan Coast Guard cutter stays between a Chinese vessel at left and a boat carrying the Japanese citizens.

TOKYO — When a half-dozen Chinese patrol vessels entered Japanese waters 14 months ago, Japan’s then-prime minister called an emergency meeting.
The Chinese ambassador in Tokyo was summoned for a tongue-lashing.
A Japanese government spokesman described an “invasion” of “unprecedented scale.”
The vessels eventually backtracked, but the episode signaled the first stage of China’s fundamental maritime strategy — one in which it forges into new areas, withstands the initial fury, and turns groundbreaking gambits into commonplace activity.
In most cases the strategy has worked.
Chinese boats now cut through waters around Japan-administered islands almost weekly, drawing complaints from Tokyo but not alarm.
For Japan, China’s piecemeal advance through contested territory represents perhaps its greatest defense challenge since the end of World War II.
Although several Asian nations have tried to curb China’s expansionist ambitions, some experts feel Japan is best-equipped: led by a competent prime minister, powered by a reviving economy and backed militarily by the United States.
But despite ongoing upgrades to its aircraft and patrol boats and increased coordination with Washington, Japan has yet to find an answer for its increasingly powerful neighbor.
Officials here say China continues to push boundaries, sending fighter jets closer to Japanese shores and last week drawing up a new air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, over the East China Sea.
None of China’s moves, by design, has been provocative enough to spark an armed skirmish.
That partly explains why deterring China has been so vexing for others in the region.
In the South China Sea, China has backed the Philippines away from several contested reefs and shoals by sending waves of increasingly powerful vessels to the area.
Several Japanese officials and security experts say China is now duplicating that strategy in the East China Sea, but with more intensity, because of the frequent use of aircraft.
China is trying to “unilaterally alter the status quo by coercive measures,” Fumio Kishida, Japan’s foreign minister, said in a news conference Friday.
Chinese officials portray their moves as responses to Japanese provocations, particularly Tokyo’s purchase in September 2012 of three contested islets from a private landowner.
But Japanese officials say China’s ambitions at sea go back well before September 2012, and they point to a several-year trend of Chinese activity in the East China Sea.
In 2004 Japanese scrambles against Chinese aircraft occurred roughly monthly, according to Ministry of Defense statistics. By 2007 they happened almost weekly.
This year they’re happening more than daily.
Two months ago a drone was spotted for the first time above the islets.
A Japanese Defense Ministry press official said that its origin hasn’t yet been identified, but “if you take its flight path into consideration, it is possible to suspect it is a drone of China.”
The trend “testifies to a long-term increase in Chinese military activity in the maritime domain,” a foreign ministry official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the situation.

Japan’s military limited
If China has been increasing its maritime presence for more than a half-decade, Japan has had to catch up. Until several years ago Japanese leaders almost never described China as a threat.
Through 2010, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces were positioned primarily to defend against a Russian invasion from the north.
Japan’s reversal has been swift. A new defense strategy three years ago reorganized troops, placing more emphasis on perimeter islands.
Japan is now updating that strategy, and initial recommendations call for the introduction of a Marines-like unit and the eventual use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for surveillance.
The Defense Ministry’s budget request for 2014 calls for upgrades to surveillance equipment and the purchase of new patrol aircraft.
Though China’s announcement last week of its air defense identification zone threw a spotlight on the airspace above the East China Sea, much of Japan’s spending was already geared to aircraft upgrades.
The Air Self-Defense Force budget is set to rise 7 percent in 2014.
Japan has some of the world’s most modern technology for surveillance and deterrence, military experts say. But its problem would come if ever there was an armed conflict, barred by its pacifist constitution from having key offensive weapons like long-range missiles or traditional aircraft carriers.
Japan’s largest ship, the Izumo-class destroyer, can only carry helicopters.
“That’s definitely a weakness,” said Masashi Nishihara, president of the Research Institute for Peace and Security in Tokyo.
Before taking office one year ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe talked about removing some of the restrictions on the military.
But that would require contentious constitutional revisions, and Abe, in office, has instead channeled his energy into patching up relations with others in the region who were ignored by his predecessors.
Abe has visited every member of ASEAN in what some experts say is an attempt to isolate China.

War of words
For countries on the periphery, China and Japan have been hawking dueling narratives about their conflict. Military expert Li Jie told China’s Global Times that the United States and Japan had been “defiant” in refusing to cooperate with the Chinese edict that all aircraft in the new aerial zone relay flight information to Beijing.
A separate editorial in the China Daily said Beijing has every right to adopt an “internationally common practice.”
Japan, meantime, has said it’s taking a stand against a “unilateral” move, and that other countries should share Japan’s concerns about freedom of navigation in international airspace.
In the short term, some experts in Tokyo say, China’s announced aerial zone might have backfired, drawing strong rebukes from the Australia, South Korea and the European Union and prompting a flyover of U.S. unarmed B-52 bombers.
But the real test for China’s strategy comes after the initial shock has waned.
“For the time being, things seem to be quite favorable to us,” said Narushige Michishita, an associate professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
“But the question is how long this will last. China has been creating a gradual fait accompli, step by step, which is a pretty smart tactic. We make a big deal of this now, but we’ll forget about it after a while.”

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China’s Limited Influence

By IAN BREMMER

Many people around the world believe that China’s rise to the role of dominant global player is inevitable.
A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year found that in 23 of 39 countries surveyed, a majority of respondents said China is already, or will soon become, the “world’s leading superpower.”
Even in America, just 47 percent told Pew they believe the United States will remain in that role, and the survey was conducted before Washington’s recent shutdown hardened opinions about America’s political dysfunction.
But although China’s economic influence is growing — it is now the lead trade partner for 124 countries, compared to just 76 for the United States — its power to influence other nations is slight.
It has achieved little of what policymakers call “capture,” a condition in which economic or security dependence of one country on another allows the more powerful to drive the other’s policy making.
Only in countries like North Korea, Cambodia and Laos does China have that kind of heft; in North Korea, for example, China provides 90 percent of the country’s energy and 80 percent of its consumer goods.
But these are not the sorts of allies that help an emerging power extend its influence.
Based on the size of their commercial relationships with China as a share of their overall economies, the governments next closest to “China capture” are Pakistan and Myanmar.
But Beijing’s reluctance to undermine improving relations with India or to become more deeply implicated in Pakistan’s chaotic domestic politics will prevent a closer embrace.
Myanmar is moving away from China on its own.
Its recent political and economic opening signals an effort to better diversify its international partners to avoid too deep a dependence on Beijing.
There are other countries where China wields extraordinary economic influence (Sudan, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo) or political clout (Iran, Syria and Venezuela).
The former are too corrupt for many Western governments to do business with, and lousy relations with the United States force the latter to look for powerful friends.
Russia needs a deep-pocketed customer for its oil and gas, but commercial and political competition with China in the former Soviet states that lie between them, and traditional Russian paranoia over Chinese emigration into sparsely populated Siberia, will prevent a full embrace.
In fact, the economic vulnerability and political brittleness in these countries might one day compound weaknesses inside China.
As party officials undertake the reforms needed to create a dynamic economy driven by Chinese consumer purchasing power, reliance on commercial and political ties with basket-case countries can be a dangerous thing.
That’s because such countries pull partners into their crises, where security and economic risks outweigh any possible benefit from the relationship.
China wants a stable Korean peninsula, but Pyongyang’s unpredictable bluster often creates the opposite.
Over time, China’s trade and investment relations with key trading partners that hold strategic value like Germany, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia might allow Beijing greater influence in their policy making decisions.
That kind of clout would lead to direct political and economic benefits: China would win access to commodities, profit-making opportunities for its companies and an increase in its international political leverage vis-à-vis the United States and Europe.
Germany in particular could give China a stable foothold into European markets and a means of better aligning European economic policy with Chinese preferences; countries like Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia provide China with much much-needed commodities.
China is already second only to the United States as Germany’s leading non-European export market.
It replaced the United States as Brazil’s largest trade partner in 2009.
In the Middle East, China is fast becoming the No. 1 source of energy demand for nearly every producer in the region and investing heavily in regional infrastructure to support supply routes.
Yet, all these countries have reasons to limit their dependence on China, the United States or any other single power.
Even in China’s backyard, emerging powers like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam will continue to forge new economic ties with Beijing, but they still hope an expanded U.S. presence in Asia will help them hedge against too great a reliance on China’s good will.
In today’s media-driven world, soft power is another crucial element of superpower influence.
Yet, beyond the inaccessibility of China’s language for most foreigners and their indifference to its social trends, China’s political and economic systems have little appeal in other countries.
Its state capitalist economic model attracts political leaders looking to build wealth and micromanage markets, but it offers little for ordinary citizens.
War-weary Americans and their distracted political leaders are less interested in responsibilities overseas, creating a vacuum of international leadership.
But for better and for worse, neither China nor anyone else appears ready and able to fill America’s superpower shoes.

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