A U.S.- China tug of war

A REGIONAL `SUPERPOWER' like China seems determined to test the diplomatic patience and political maturity of the present Bush administration in Washington over the surreal saga of the latter's stranded spy plane. The event that took place on All Fools' Day (in China's timeframe) is of course far from anyone's idea of a practical joke about the relative military strengths of Beijing and Washington. Yet, the U.S.-China tug of war concerning their national pride and bargaining power is dragging on. If anything, the continuing strategic `gamesmanship' has been made easier by Beijing's reluctant ``humanitarian'' gesture of releasing all the 24 American military personnel who had made an ``emergency landing'' in their reconnaissance aircraft at a military base in China's Hainan island. The stricken spy plane had landed without ``prior permission'' and in ``violation'' of Chinese airspace after having been involved in a mid-air collision with one of Beijing's fighter jets during a cat-and- mouse game within the airspace claimed by China to be above its economic zone. The release of the American air crew has of course followed an expression of regret, semantically not amounting to an apology, by the Bush administration. The U.S. said that it was sorry about the death of the pilot of the Chinese warplane, which had scrambled to shadow and intercept the American surveillance aircraft. The Chinese airman, posthumously anointed a national hero, died when his plane crashed into the South China Sea following the collision, the circumstances in which it occurred still being in dispute between the two countries.

China and the U.S. have held a round of tense parleys over the argument that extends to several other issues - in particular, whether and if so when China will hand over the badly damaged aircraft to the American side and can the U.S. carry out surveillance flights at the very edges of China's airspace without violating the spirit of international law? Washington says there is nothing amiss about its reconnaissance missions in international airspace, however close to China the flights might seem to take place. The U.S. is therefore disinclined to accept China's demand that such aerial spy flights be discontinued close to its airspace as determined under its laws. It is a different matter that Washington is not content with the data it could gather through its remote- sensing spy satellites that orbit the earth. In the process, the U.S. has exposed its unarmed surveillance aircraft to the risk of being shadowed and chased by the Chinese warplanes. The possibility of armed escort for future American reconnaissance flights is an open question now.

On a different plane, the U.S. seems convinced that China has already accessed, to the extent it could, all the electronic eavesdropping gadgetry which the American air crew could not disable or destroy before the ``emergency landing''. In this context, China's physical delivery of the plane to the Americans is primarily of symbolic value. Moreover, with the U.S. unwilling to call off its spy flights off China's coast, the sustained standoff is entirely strategic in scope. In macro terms, China is testing how far it could go in its brinkmanship as a regional `superpower' in East Asia, while the U.S., deeply embarrassed over the ``emergency landing'' in hostile territory, is keen to affirm its status as the sole global superpower. It is already being argued within the strategic community in East Asia that the symbolism of a possible new Cold War lies behind the American intransigence (even in regard to the delayed regret over the Chinese pilot's death). The likelihood, if indeed, of a Second Cold War, involving the current Bush administration and China unlike the U.S. and the old Soviet Union in the first version, will depend not merely on how the present row between Beijing and Washington is resolved. The other factors range from the U.S. plans for national and theatre missile systems to its protective equation with Taiwan - issues with an impact on world peace as well.

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