Paper Dragon: Beijing Draws Online Ridicule Over Air Defense

VOA News

US warning

The Chinese government has drawn ridicule from domestic Internet users for its low-key reaction to U.S. and Japanese aircraft ignoring Beijing's creation of an air defense zone in the East China Sea.

Many Chinese microbloggers posted messages Wednesday mocking the ruling Communist Party or lamenting that it has become, in their view, an international "laughing stock."
China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over disputed waters in the East China Sea on Saturday. 

It said all foreign civilian and military aircraft flying in the zone must identify themselves and follow Beijing's instructions or face unspecified "emergency measures."
The Chinese zone includes air space above a resource-rich chain of Japanese islands claimed by China.
Chinese nationalist commentators initially expressed a largely positive view of the move as a sign of China's greater assertiveness in dealing with Japan and its key ally the United States.
But the United States said it flew two unarmed B-52 bombers through the zone on Monday without notifying China. 

Japanese airlines operating in the area stopped submitting flight plans to Beijing on Wednesday, at the request of the Japanese government.
China's defense ministry said Wednesday it monitored the U.S. military planes while they transited the zone. It also insisted that China has the capability to exercise "effective control" of the air space.
When asked whether China will take tougher measures if there are further such incidents, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Beijing will "respond accordingly depending on the different circumstances and the threat levels that we may face."
The Chinese government's muted statements on the issue prompted many Internet users to describe the Chinese aerial zone as a farce. 

Those sympathetic to the government said stronger action is needed in future.
In a Weibo message monitored by Reuters, outspoken retired Chinese Major General Luo Yuan called for the zone to be "enforced to the full" and said "no country must think that they can ... leave things to chance."
Chinese officials have said Beijing established the ADIZ in order to exercise its "right" to defend national sovereignty. 

They also have said China is acting like other nations that have created aerial notification zones in international airspace.
The United States and Japan have their own aerial zones, but only require foreign aircraft to identify themselves if those planes intend to pass through U.S. and Japanese national airspace.

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Tony Abbott refuses to back down over China comments

"We are a strong ally of Japan, we have a very strong view that international disputes should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law..." -- Tony Abbott 

By Mark Kenny, Philip Wen

PM Tony Abbott

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop: "Australia opposes action by any side that we believe could add to the tensions or add to the risk of a miscalculation in disputed territorial zones in the region."

Tony Abbott has refused to take a backward step in a deepening diplomatic spat with Beijing, declaring "China trades with us because it is in China's interest to trade with us".
The unapologetic comments came after Beijing issued an arrogant warning to Canberra to "correct" its public statements which were seen as siding with Japan over disputed territory in the East China Sea.
An escalating series of diplomatic gestures by both sides have strained relations this week after Australia called in China's ambassador on Monday.
Canberra demanded an explanation from China for its unilateral decision to declare an expanded air defence zone over disputed waters and islands claimed by both Japan and China.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop defended the government's position on Thursday, arguing Australia has a key stake in the region and therefore opposes "action by any side that we believe could add to the tensions or add to the risk of a miscalculation in disputed territorial zones in the region".
Later in the day, Mr Abbott went further, stressing strategic ties.
"We are a strong ally of the United States, we are a strong ally of Japan, we have a very strong view that international disputes should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law and where we think that is not happening, or it is not happening appropriately, we will speak our mind," he said.
Beijing announced the expansion at the weekend, along with the instruction that civil aircraft would be required to lodge flight paths and seek permission before traversing the newly declared air defence identification zone.
The highly provocative act brought an immediate response from the US, which dispatched as many as four military aircraft, including two B52 long range bombers, to fly through the zone as a way of demonstrating that the Chinese annexure would be ignored.
With Australia's ambassador to Beijing, Frances Adamson, away on leave, China hauled in Justin Hayhurst, the deputy head of mission at Australia's Beijing embassy, to remonstrate.
Beijing also issued a series of statements complaining that Australia had taken sides and that it should act quickly to "correct" its position, if it wanted the relationship with China to remain healthy.
The new air defence zone came just days after Ms Bishop signed a joint communique with the US at the annual Australia-US ministerial consultations in Washington opposing “unilateral or coercive change in the status quo” in the East China Sea. 

It also follows a tri-lateral agreement signed with the US and Japan in Bali last month.
“It's certainly a slap in the face for the diplomatic position that Australia, the US and Japan have been taking on this issue,” Rory Medcalf, the director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, said.

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China’s Move Puts Airspace in Spotlight

By RICK GLADSTONE and MATTHEW L. WALD
 
 China’s proclamation of a new “air defense identification zone,” an obscure aviation term that became the catalyst for escalating military tensions with Japan and the United States this week, has thrown a broader spotlight on the control of international airspace, an issue that has created confusion, and danger, in other places affected by territorial disputes.
Who has the right to fly where has been a historical irritant in relations between China and Vietnam, Panama and Colombia, Japan and Russia, to name a few examples.
Aviation experts say airspace-control arguments are perhaps most acute in Cyprus, the divided Mediterranean island, where rival air traffic controllers on the Greek and Turkish sides do not communicate with each other and can give conflicting flight information to pilots, elevating the risk of collisions.
No international treaties or agreements define the size or the rules of air defense identification zones, known by their initials, A.D.I.Z.
The zones, which originated early in World War II, have been established by more than a dozen countries with maritime borders, most notably the United States and Canada.

The B-52 message

The United States was also responsible for defining the zones claimed by Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, a legacy of the American military role played in the region since the Cold War, and an underlying source of resentment in China that perhaps helps to explain why it has asserted its own zone.
Managed by domestic military and civilian authorities, the zones are much bigger than the internationally recognized boundaries of the countries that proclaim them.
While not legally binding, they require that aircraft intending to enter the zones first provide identification and location information to determine whether they are a threat to national security.
Aircraft that fail to comply may be regarded as hostile, potentially leading to their being forced to land or shot down.
Civilian aviation officials said Wednesday that China’s new zone was just another fact of life international commercial airlines must now take into account in their flight plans and scheduling.
“There have been no delays, disruptions or anything that would impact the traveling public,” said Perry Flint, a spokesman in Washington for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely.”
Others said, however, that China’s new zone was different in some important respects — the most obvious being that it overlaps with Japan’s in an area where both claim sovereignty to the Senkaku islands.
Aircraft traversing that airspace could face a confusing situation.
“The question here is, file the intent with which nation?” Robert Mann, an aviation consultant, said.
“Seems the jury is out about filing to one, the other, or both. It won’t really be an issue until someone’s aircraft is intercepted. Hopefully not.”
The Chinese also imposed requirements that other countries do not, notably that all aircraft — even those that are not flying to a China destination but are simply passing through — provide identification and flight plans.
Secretary of State John Kerry made a point of emphasizing that distinction in his criticism of China’s new zone on Saturday.
“The United States does not apply its A.D.I.Z. procedures to foreign aircraft not intending to enter U.S. national airspace,” he said.
China provided no advance warning of its new zone to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations specialized agency, based in Montreal, that sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety and security.
Anthony Philbin, a spokesman, said in an emailed response to a query that “China was not required to contact I.C.A.O. on this matter and it therefore did not provide us with any notice.”
Some airlines have begun filing plans with China.
Singapore Airlines, which does route flights over the disputed airspace, files its plans with the Japanese authorities but said that since Monday it had “been keeping Chinese authorities informed” of flights through the area, according to a spokesman.
It is rare that commercial airlines become hostages to political disputes, but there are precedents.
In 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet military jet after flying through a prohibited zone.
All 269 people on board died.

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Air Defence Farce

After Challenges, China Backpedals on Air Zone
By JANE PERLEZ

Protecting the Senkakus

BEIJING — China has permitted rare street protests and sent armadas of fishing boats to show its growing national interest in a small string of islands in the East China Sea.

Earlier this year, the Chinese military locked its radar on a Japanese navy vessel.
Each step seemed like a measured escalation in the long-running territorial dispute, intended to press Japan to negotiate over jurisdiction of the islands. 

But they also seemed calibrated to avoid a sharp international backlash — or to raise expectations too high at home.
But by imposing a new air defense zone over the islands last weekend, Beijing has miscalculated. 

It provoked a quick, pointed challenge from the United States, set off alarm bells among Asian neighbors and created a frenzy of nationalist expression inside China on hopes that the new leadership team in Beijing would push for a decisive resolution of the longstanding dispute.
On Wednesday, after the Pentagon sent two B-52 bombers defiantly cruising around China’s new air defense zone for more than two hours, Beijing appeared to backpedal. 

The overflights went unchallenged, and some civilian airlines ignored China’s new assertion of air rights.
“We will make corresponding responses according to different situations and how big the threat is,” the spokesman at the Foreign Ministry, Qin Gang, said when asked about China’s lack of enforcement against the American planes.
Under President Xi Jinping, China has suggested that it intends to make a more robust defense of its national interests, including in maritime disputes, to match its rising economic and military power. 

But even some Chinese analysts say they wonder if the new leadership team fully anticipated the response to the latest assertion of rights — or had in mind a clear Plan B if it met with strong resistance.
“I believe Xi Jinping and his associates must have predicted the substance of this reaction; whether they underestimated the details of the reaction, I’m not sure,” said Shi Yinhong, an occasional adviser to the government and a professor of international relations at Renmin University.
China does appear determined to escalate the issue of the uninhabited Senkaku islands, as a way of forcing the Japanese to negotiate and give up control of territory that has symbolic and strategic value for both countries. 

In the long term, China has not tried to disguise its goal of weakening the alliance between the United States and Japan and supplanting the United States as the dominant naval power in the Western Pacific.
Beijing is especially frustrated that its previous, more cautious steps to convince Japan of the seriousness of its claim to the islands have not prompted Japan, which administers them, to negotiate in earnest.

But if China has been trying to drive a wedge between Washington and the Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, their strategy seems to have backfired, at least for now.
The United States had for months seemed reluctant to get involved or take sides in a dispute that carries so much emotional weight for China. 

And the Obama administration dodged requests by Japanese leaders to take a clearer stance in their favor.
That hesitation seems to have largely vanished since China pronounced it was expanding its hold on the region’s airspace.
With the flyover by the B-52s, the United States has shown it is more willing to work with Japan in opposing China’s efforts to unilaterally force a change in the status quo, even if the United States still takes a neutral stance in the islands dispute itself.

Hours after China declared its new air zone, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reaffirmed that the United States would stand by its security treaty obligations to aid Japan if it was attacked.
Since Saturday, Japanese leaders have publicly emphasized the close coordination with Washington — largely to reassure their own population, which has felt growing anxiety over China’s increasingly assertive stance.
On Wednesday in Tokyo, the defense minister, Itsunori Onodera, pledged in a phone call with Mr. Hagel to work closely with the United States military by sharing information and coordinating in the surveillance of Chinese activities in the East China Sea, Japan’s Defense Ministry said.
The new United States ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, said in her first speech since assuming her post, broadcast around the world on CNN, that China’s creation of the air defense zone “only serves to increase tensions in the region.”
The Chinese action also stirred the first official negative comments about China in South Korea since President Park Geun-hye took office this year and forged a closer relationship with Beijing. 

The coordinates of the air defense zone announced by China overlap with South Korea’s own air defense zone in some places and appear created to give China an edge in a separate maritime territorial dispute with South Korea.
“We see competition and conflict in the region deepening,” South Korea’s foreign minister, Yun Byung-se, said Wednesday. 

“Things can take a dramatic turn for the worse if territorial conflicts and historical issues are merged with nationalism.”
The announcement of the air defense zone may also have created problems at home for the leadership in China, where there are expectations among an increasingly nationalist population that the country can live up to its promise of standing up to Japan.
On Chinese social media, a barrage of commentary congratulated the government on the new air defense zone and warned that Beijing should make good on threats by the Defense Ministry that aircraft give notification or face military action.
“If the Chinese military doesn’t do anything about aircraft that don’t obey the commands to identify themselves in the zone, it will face international ridicule,” wrote Ni Fangliu, a historian and an investigative journalist, on his microblog, which has more than two million followers.
The Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of China’s military, said in a commentary published before the Chinese government acknowledged the B-52 flights that without strong enforcement, the zone would be just “armchair strategy.”
Despite the risks, Mr. Shi, the government adviser, said that proclaiming the air defense zone was important because it represented China’s first effort to expand its strategic space beyond offshore waters since the establishment of Communist China in 1949.
The response by the United States, he said, amounted to “a negative development for a strong great-power relationship” that China sought between the United States and China.

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With Glut of Lonely Men, China Has an Approved Outlet for Unrequited Lust

 

By DAN LEVIN

GUANGZHOU, China — Slack-jawed and perspiring, Chen Weizhou gazed at a pair of life-size female dolls clad, just barely, in lingerie and lace stockings.
Above these silicone vixens, an instructional video graphically depicted just how realistic they felt once undressed.
A 46-year-old tour bus driver, Mr. Chen had come earlier this month to the Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival “for fun,” which was not how he described intimacy with his wife, who did not attend.
“When you’re young sex is so mysterious, but once you’re married it gets really bland,” he said, barely taking his eyes off the screen.
With an official theme of “healthy sex, happy families,” the 11th annual exposition sought to remedy the plight of Chinese men like Mr. Chen — and their wives, if they are married.

A Place Where Capitalism and Hedonism Meet: Three decades after China began shedding its prudish Mao-era mores, sex is now a big business there.

Shenzhen jack-off competition
Nov. 8th 2013, the 11th China Sex Culture Festival and 15th Guangzhou Sex and health exhibition's opening ceremony is hold in Pazhou Nanfeng International Exhibition Center in Guangzhou China.
The overwhelming presence of men at the festival mirrored a demographic imbalance in China, where decades of the one-child rule and a cultural preference for sons combined with illegal sex-selective abortions have distorted the country’s gender ratio to 118 newborn boys for every 100 girls in 2012, rather than the normal 103 boys.
In Guangdong Province, home to a migrant worker population of 30 million — China’s largest — the scarcity of women leaves bachelors with limited options.
Filling an exhibition center here in the capital of Guangdong in southern China, the festival was a three-day mating ritual between capitalism and hedonism, all diligently observed by that most prudish of chaperones: the Chinese government.
Erotic possibilities abounded, including a transgender fashion show, sliced deer antler marketed as an aphrodisiac, naughty nurse costumes and some flesh-color objects disconcertingly called “Captain Stabbing.”
Three decades after China began shedding its priggish Mao-era mores, sex is now a big business here. Across the country, pink-lit “hair salons” staffed by provocatively garbed women compete with massage parlors and late-night paid companions who slip their business cards under hotel room doors.
Those looking to enhance their encounters can shop at countless “adult health product” stores and on the Internet.
Most of the inventory is made in China.
According to state news media, more than 1,000 Chinese companies manufacture around 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, generating $2 billion a year as of 2010.
The bounty of carnal titillation must contend with the firm hand of the Communist Party, which bans pornography and punishes those guilty of “group licentiousness” in the name of protecting traditional Chinese values.
But the party’s moral authority has frayed of late because of the publicized antics of its friskier members.
In June, a government official was sentenced to 13 years in prison for corruption after a video surfaced showing him in bed with an 18-year-old woman.
His fall came three months after photos depicting a coterie of six naked people, including a party official and his wife, exploded on the Internet.
In an attempt to give the sex festival a veneer of respectability, government-run medical organizations sponsored booths in a side room, which were, unsurprisingly, desolate.
The main draw was lust.
Thousands of visitors, nearly all middle-aged men wielding cameras, poured through the aisles in search of any visible flesh.
“Guys have been taking my picture all day,” said a bikini-clad model, Liang Lin, 23, who was hugging her bare midriff defensively as a throng of men jostled desperately to get a better shot.
Not far away, a male crowd waited for a diminutive Japanese pornography star named Rei Mizuna to appear.
When she finally emerged from a dressing room to hand out racy autographed photos, her frenzied fans surged forward with such zeal they shattered a glass display case.
Those unrequited desires have helped spawn a booming domestic sex toy industry.
“A stuffed man doesn’t know what it’s like to be hungry,” explained a salesman at one booth filled with inflatable dolls.
Just then, an older gentleman approached and tried to bargain over an $8 figure with black tresses and a vacant stare.
Across the floor, the Chinese chain Buccone sold higher-end companionship.
These $6,400 rubber dolls warm up “just like a real person,” said an employee, Nie Tai, 23, and could be customized.
“Some men come with photos of their late wives.”
Huang Yulong, who works for a lingerie company called Toylace, was unfazed by the festival’s libidinous fervor.
“Chinese men have a fetish for tearing off a woman’s clothes, so they’re not looking for romance,” said Ms. Huang, standing beside a mannequin wearing a fishnet body stocking that seemed to have run out of thread around the inner thigh.
At least, not with their spouses, she added.
“Customers say they’re buying for their wives, but we know it’s for their mistresses.”
In a country where it is still taboo to discuss sex publicly, creative packaging hinted at a multitude of personal tastes and private anxieties.
Among the condom brands were Freud, packed in pink boxes, and Tiger Teeth, which lay beside a colorful assortment of prophylactics wrapped to resemble lollipops.
Perhaps because the domestic sex toy industry started with a focus on exports, many items boasted of a foreign mystique, like the hand-held Great Rome 5 and King Kong.
English mistranslations were particularly problematic among male sexual enhancement products, many of which suggested unintended consequences, like Black Widow.
One vendor failed to impress a potential customer when he vowed that the Casanova pills worked best. “The effects last a week,” he said.
To attract potential buyers, some companies got creative, hosting pole dancing shows and other activities.
Li Jianglin, 42, a shoe factory manager, won a contest in which participants raced to inflate condoms, huffing and puffing until the first one popped.
“Go, go, go!” screamed the female organizer.
Mr. Li won a cash prize worth 16 cents, strawberry-flavored condoms and a pink, battery-operated device with “overwhelm by joy” emblazoned on the box.
He eyed the contraption, turning it this way and that.
“The condoms are useful, but I don’t know what this thing is,” he said. “Really.”
Not all visitors appeared to be so clueless.
Ignoring the festival crowds, a 66-year-old retired real-estate consultant fondled an anatomically correct gadget, which her husband promptly purchased for $8.
“When men get older, that part doesn’t function very well and I have needs,” said the woman, who would identify herself only as Ms. Huang.
She marveled at how times had changed since they married in 1975.
“Back then, under Mao, you couldn’t talk about sex,” she said.
Asked how they learned, Ms. Huang smiled knowingly.
“Instinct,” she said.

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China's presence looms amid massive U.S.-Japanese AnnualEx war games

• USS George Washington in huge naval exercise -- AnnualEx 2013 -- off Okinawa
• This year's games held against backdrop of tension after China imposes new air zone

By Paul Armstrong

As the United States prepared to mark Thanksgiving, the centerpiece of the U.S. 7th fleet in the Pacific, the USS George Washington, was deployed off the Japanese island of Okinawa.
USS George Washington, East China Sea -- The deafening roar of state-of-the-art warplanes being catapulted into the air from its huge flight deck signaled that the USS George Washington was back in combat mode after its recent detour to the Philippines to take part in the aid effort in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan.
Barely a week on and the 90,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is now patrolling waters off the island of Okinawa as part a huge naval exercise -- AnnualEx 2013 -- involving dozens of warships, submarines and aircraft from the U.S. Navy's 7th fleet and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).
The aim? 

To provide a stern test of their ability to effectively and mutually respond to the defense of Japan or to a regional crisis or contingency situation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, according to the U.S. Navy.
But this year's war games have taken on an added dimension given the high-pressure atmosphere in the region at present -- they take place in the shadow of a controversial new Air Defense Identification Zone announced by the Chinese last weekend.
Map showing the controversial air defense identification zone in the East China Sea.

This zone, which incorporates among other areas an East China Sea island chain at the center of an acrimonious tug of war between Tokyo and Beijing, requires that all military aircraft in the area must report their flight plans to China, maintain two-way radio and clearly mark their nationalities on the aircraft. 

China has warned it will take "defensive measures" if their orders are ignored.
The commander of the U.S. 7th fleet, Vice Admiral Robert L. Thomas, appeared relaxed about the situation while addressing a group of reporters aboard the USS George Washington. 

He said while China's air defense zone did not appear to be "well thought out" given the overlap with both Japanese and South Korean territorial claims, he did not think U.S. military activity in the region would be negatively affected.
"We are going to continue with our operations in international airspace as we always have," he said.

"It's about international norms, standards, rules and laws. When anybody makes an extreme claim it is really an imperative that the international community can continue to operate in accordance with international law and not be distracted.

"So for us it's 'steady as you go.' Our operations in the East China Sea will continue as they always have."

Japan, which administers the largely uninhabited Senkaku island chain, has described China's move as "a profoundly dangerous act that may cause unintended consequences in the area," while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said "this unilateral action constitutes an attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea. Escalatory action will only increase tensions in the region and create risks of an incident."

In recent months, both sides have been involved in a dangerous game of "cat and mouse," prompting fears that any miscalculation could set the two Asian powers on a collision course -- with the United States likely to be dragged into such a conflict to defend its Japanese ally. 

Tokyo says it has twice scrambled fighter jets this month after Chinese aircraft appeared on course to enter its airspace. 

For its part, China lodged a complaint after it said a Japanese warship recently entered waters where the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy was holding live-fire drills, noting "the provocative move may have led to unexpected emergencies."
Meanwhile, China's first aircraft carrier, the "Liaoning," set sail this week from its home port of Qingdao in eastern China. 

According to the PLA Navy's website, it will head for the South China Sea to "conduct scientific experiments and military training." 

This course would take it through the East China Sea accompanied by four other warships.
Yet with so many potential flashpoints in the region, Thomas is optimistic that conflict will be avoided. 

He pointed to the professionalism shown by the armed forces on all sides in the region as the basis for this confidence.
"The South Koreans have shown great restraint with regard to North Korea and those severe provocations, while the Japanese Self Defense Force has also been very measured," he said. 

Significantly, he pointed to China's development of a "world class" navy, with a level of professionalism that matches its improving infrastructure.
"The more confident they become in their own capabilities, then this will actually 'depressurize' the situation," he said. 

With F-18 fighters taking off and landing almost every few minutes, it was easy to forget the role the carrier played in the Leyte Gulf more than a week ago.

Many of its fighter jets were flown back to Japan to make room for more helicopters able to ferry in supplies to remote areas of the Philippines in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan.
"The ship became a 'lily pad' for relief operations," said the carrier's commander, Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. 

"This is something we'll train more for," he added, citing the need for a modern navy to be able to adapt to an increasingly diverse range of challenges and missions within its theater of operations.
"It was humbling to be able to take part in the extraordinary humanitarian effort in the Philippines."
Yet the sight of dozens of warships in tight formation in high seas off Japan was another reminder of how serious the U.S. and Japan are taking the threat to regional security -- undeniably their biggest challenge.

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China, Australia spat over Air Defence Identification Zone highlights 'troubled relations' in region

China's decision to establish an ADIZ is unhelpful, disturbing and cannot be ignored.

By Catherine McGrath
Japanese Maritime Defence Force Murasame Class destroyer JMSDF Murasame (left) and US Navy Arleigh Burke Class destroyer USS Preble sail in company with HMAS Sydney as the three warships participate in officer of the watch manoeuvres in the Pacific Ocean during the lead-up to Exercise Pacific Bond 2013

There is no doubting this is an important week in the rocky history of relations in north Asia and tensions over the disputed islands in the East China Sea.
The turning point came last week when China announced it was establishing an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), with Japan and the United States quick to react.
Then came Australia. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop called in the Chinese Ambassador for a dressing down and Beijing responded by calling Australia's behaviour irresponsible and mistaken.
Australia's language on China is getting tougher under this Government but arguably so are the strategic circumstances it is dealing with.
From Australia's perspective, China's decision to establish an ADIZ is unhelpful, disturbing and cannot be ignored.

The spat comes at a crucial time because tensions in the East China Sea are as high as any moment in the post-cold war era.
"China is not pleased," Professor Jingdong Yuan, a pro-China activist from the University of Sydney, said.
Professor Yuan believes Australia's decision to call in the Chinese Ambassador was a step too far and that by taking this position Australia can no longer be seen as impartial.
But as far as Australia is concerned China should understand that the timing of its decision is going to be questioned.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings believes Australia had to say something.
"The application of the ADIZ has not been helpful and is a diplomatic misstep on the part of Chinese," he said. 

"They should not be surprised that countries like Japan, US and Australia have made comments that they are going too far.
"It doesn't mean Australia is taking sides.
"Saying nothing would not be conducive to managing a set of troubled relations in the region," Mr Jennings said.
"The move by China was unhelpful and came at the wrong time. It has created a new tension which no one needs right now. Lower key strategies would have been more useful to adopt at this time." 

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop talked of the need to invigorate the Australian-Japan relationship

China watching Australia's relationship with 'closest friend' Japan
China is also concerned about Australia's growing closeness to Japan under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
While Labor was in power, relations with Japan took a back seat to a focus on growing ties with China, even though Japan and Australia share a very close strategic and defence relationship.
The Abbott Government has made it clear it wants to strengthen ties with Japan it believes have been left behind in recent years.
It is a delicate repositioning because of existing regional tensions and the Abbott Government emphasises the move will no be at the expense of China.
At the East Asia Summit meeting in Brunei in October, Mr Abbott, after his meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, described Japan as Australia's "closest friend in Asia".
Immediately China started to take notice.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is due shortly to travel to China. 

She has already been to Tokyo.
In a Canberra speech in early November, Ms Bishop talked of the need to invigorate the Australian-Japan relationship but emphasized that would not take anything from the relationship with China.
"The relationship with Japan has not had sufficient recognition in recent years as much of the rest of the world shifted focus to China and the extraordinary size and speed of its growth," Ms Bishop said.
"Of course China's rise must be and will be embraced; it is in every nation's interest for China to become even more than it is today.
"However, Australia's friendship with a rising China does not come at the expense of close and longstanding friendships."
There is nothing in these statements for China to complain about, but it is watching Australia to see how this develops.
Australia meantime hopes China understands reinvigorating ties with Japan should not be seen as threatening.

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