Japan, South Korea defy China air defence zone

IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: US Navy FA-18 Hornets park on the flight deck of the USS George Washington during the Annual Exercise 2013, at sea yesterday. The USS George Washington took part in a joint military naval drill with Japan yesterday in waters off southern Japan, just days after it participated in humanitarian relief operations in the Philippines. More than 20 ships and 7,000 U.S. personnel participated in this year’s exercise which aims at strengthening ties between the US Navy and the Japan Maritime Self Defence force. While the US Navy would not confirm the exact co-ordinates, they were able to say the event took place, at one point at least, some 300km southeast of Japan’s southern-most the islands of Okinawa. This is in the general vicinity, though not within, the new airspace defence zone which China newly established last week.

AFP/DPA/Reuters/Beijing

Meanwhile Chinese authorities are coming under domestic pressure to toughen their response to incursions into the air defence identification zone (ADIZ) they declared last weekend.

The ADIZ covers the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands, which lie near oil and gas reserves and are claimed by China as the Diaoyu and Taiwan as the Tiaoyutai.

The move triggered US and Japanese accusations of provocation as global concerns grew.

China’s ADIZ requires aircraft to provide their flight plan, declare their nationality and maintain two-way radio communication – or face “defensive emergency measures”.

But Tokyo said its coastguard and air force had flown unopposed in the zone without complying with Beijing’s rules.

“We have been operating normal warning and patrol activities in the East China Sea including that area,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga. “We have no intention of changing this.”

South Korea’s military said it encountered no resistance when one of its planes entered the area – which also overlaps Seoul’s ADIZ – unannounced on Tuesday.

A day earlier two giant US Stratofortress bombers flew into the zone, an unmistakable message from Washington before a pre-planned visit to the region by Vice-President Joe Biden.

China’s defence ministry issued a statement 11 hours after the US announcement saying that its military “monitored the entire process” of the B-52 flights, without expressing regret or anger or threatening direct action.

The Global Times, which is close to China’s ruling Communist Party and often takes a nationalist tone, criticised the reaction as “too slow” in an editorial yesterday.

“We failed in offering a timely and ideal response,” it said, adding that Chinese officials needed to react to “psychological battles” by the US.

Asked about the South Korean flight, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: “China identifies any aircraft within the ADIZ and must have noted the relevant situation you have mentioned.”

He reiterated criticism of US and Japanese responses to the zone, urging both countries to “immediately correct their mistakes and stop their irresponsible accusations against China”.

The Communist Party seeks to drum up popular support by tapping into deep-seated resentment of Japan for its brutal invasion of China in the 1930s.

Such nationalist passions are easily aroused, and Chinese social media users called for Beijing to retaliate against Washington.

“The US’s bomber wandered around the edge of our ADIZ, I figure we should respond in kind. One good turn deserves another, right?” wrote one commentator on Sina Weibo, a social media service similar to Twitter.

Senior administration officials in Washington said on Wednesday that Biden will raise Washington’s concerns about the zone while in Beijing.

The trip will allow him to “make the broader point that there’s an emerging pattern of behaviour by China that is unsettling to China’s own neighbours and raising questions about how China operates in international space”, an official said.

China’s relations with South Korea have recently improved but the zone covers a disputed South Korean-controlled rock that has long been a source of tensions between them.

South Korea’s Vice-Defence Minister Baek Seung-Joo expressed “strong regret” at China’s ADIZ announcement, which he said was “heightening military tension in the region”.

South Korea called on Beijing to redraw the lines of the ADIZ, saying that Seoul was not consulted before the zone was unilaterally announced on Saturday, and that it did not recognise the zone.

Baek made the request to China’s Deputy Chief of Staff Wang Guanzhong, who was in Seoul for wider talks on defence issues, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

The ADIZ area, as laid out by Beijing, includes a formation known as Socotra Rock, which lies just 5m below the surface, around 150km from South Korea and 290km from China.

The rock is the subject of a dispute between China, where it is known as Suyan, and Seoul, which calls it Ieodo and operates a maritime research station on the site.

Yesterday China rejected South Korea’s demand for the repeal of the zone, but appeared to soften its demand that commercial aircraft tell its military authorities of any plans to transit the area. Japan’s two biggest airlines have already begun defying that order.

“The East China Sea Air Defence Identification zone is not aimed at normal international flights. We hope that relevant countries’ airlines can proactively co-operate, so there is more order and safety for flights,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

The Philippines voiced concern that China may extend control of air space over disputed areas of the South China Sea, where the two nations have a separate territorial dispute.

Japanese passenger airlines said after government pressure they will not obey Beijing’s rules, while the State Department has taken an ambiguous position, saying it was advising US carriers “to take all steps they consider necessary to operate safely in the... region”.

Thai Airways said on Thursday that it will comply with Beijing’s directive.

China for its part has accused the US and Japan – which both have ADIZs – of double standards, saying the real provocateur is Tokyo.

Defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said in a statement yesterday that Japan established its ADIZ in 1969, so Tokyo had “no right to make irresponsible remarks” about China’s.

“Japan consistently blames others and smears the name of other countries but never examines its own conduct,” Yang said in the statement posted on the ministry’s website after a press briefing that was closed to foreign reporters.

“If there are to be demands for a withdrawal, then we invite the Japanese side to first withdraw its air defence identification zone, and China may reconsider after 44 years,” the spokesman said.

Japan says it only requires planes headed for its territorial air space to notify authorities, not those merely transiting through its air defence identification zone.

The islands dispute lay dormant for decades but flared in September 2012 when Tokyo purchased three of the uninhabited outcrops from private owners.

Beijing accused Tokyo of changing the status quo and has since sent surveillance ships and aircraft to the area, prompting Japan to scramble fighter jets 386 times in the 12 months to September.

The manoeuvres have raised fears of an accidental clash.