East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

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Maggern

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Though hard to confirm, this article has some interesting insights about the leadup to the zone:

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最新一期香港亚洲周刊报道,据消息人士透露,中国宣布划设东海防空识别区,是中共最高决策层酝酿再三的决定,此举是中国海空战略重大突破。背后深藏的意义在于,中国关注的焦点不再只是钓鱼岛,也不再只是东海中间线的油气田,而是中国突破第一岛链的出海口宫古海峡。

  消息人士说,在东海上空划设防空识别区,这一海空战略重大突破,是中南海在中共十八大后拟定的。这在中央军委已经酝酿很长时间,其间曾多番听取专家学者建议。

  年前,国防部再度向中央军委提议,尽快划设防空识别区,当时中南海仍按兵不动。4个月前,权衡利弊后,中共总书记、中央军委主席习近平作出决定而最终拍板,更提出中日之争“由资源之争演变为战略之争”的论述。

  11月9日,中共召开十八届三中全会,之前一天,中国驻日本大使馆开始侨民自愿登记工作,为在发生重大突发紧急事件时及时联系侨民并提供协助,这一举措当时没有引起外界特别关注。

  11月12日,中共十八届三中全会闭幕,北京声称要成立国家安全委员会,执行管理国土安全的职能。10天后,在东海上空划设防空识别区公布并实施。联想到之前中国驻日本大使馆开展的侨民自愿登记工作,此时引起人们纷纷猜测:是否与中方公布东海防空识别区有关?是否要为打仗作准备?北京外交部发言人秦刚则说,侨民登记是一种国际惯例,如此联想是“不必要的解读”。

  不过,中国设立了防空识别区后,未来中国军机肯定会大幅加强在这个区域的活动。

  据透露,继东海后,中国对黄海、南海等相关海域,都会陆续划设防空识别区。

According to an inside source, the decision to establish the zone was made at top level. Apparently Xi Jinping exercised his 拍板 ("take the wheel" comparable to executive decision I guess, which is the final word in a locked debate made by the Chairman). It has been in the planning stage for a long time, and it took another four months after the decision was made until the zone now became operational. The source also points to the elephant in the room...that the Diaoyu islands is part of the reasoning, but not the main intent. Nor is increasing presence in the ECS itself. Rather, it's part of the strategy of expanding PLA presence past the first island chain.
 

Mindsculptor

Just Hatched
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the respond from each government due to need for face saving measure.

Saving face is an Asian thing, I'm afraid. The US government isn't going to be real understanding about the need of the PRC government to save face if an incident happens.

US civilian airliners already made to be complying with rules needed when they are in foreign airspace to avoid potential issues later. The danger is currently with Japan, now the whole world playing up by media where it is call by for JAL to ignore, what happen, who's responsibility. What's so special about Japan airlines flouting rules?? Very dangerous.

I'm not real conversant on what international rules of flight passage are. However, if there's an incident involving a civilian airliner, it's going to be KAL 007 all over again.
 

Mindsculptor

Just Hatched
Registered Member
The source also points to the elephant in the room...that the Diaoyu islands is part of the reasoning, but not the main intent. Nor is increasing presence in the ECS itself. Rather, it's part of the strategy of expanding PLA presence past the first island chain.

Which would surprise nobody in the US. The question I have, however, is if the PRC leadership thinks the US would stand for it. Or if they're so divorced from reality that they actually think the PLA stands a snowball's chance in hell if the PRC's leadership refuses to listen to reason. Saving face is all well and good, but it won't save that face from being kicked in if it's taken too far.
 

kroko

Senior Member
I came here because I'm quite at a loss as to what the Chinese general staff were thinking when they decided this was a good idea. What did they think the American reaction was going to be? If that SNAFU with the USN surveillance aircraft hadn't happened, maybe the Pentagon wouldn't have sent the B-52 flight and maybe the White House wouldn't have publicly stated that the islands were covered under the mutual defense treaty with Japan.

Also, I'm rather shocked by the prosaic reaction of the PLAAF to two B-52s flying in a so-called air defense zone. Maybe it escaped their attention that two BUFFs equals 40 Tomahawks, which is quite a bit of destructive power even conventionally armed. And what if they had been armed and their training flight had not been scheduled for months? Congratulation, PLAAF, you succesfully tracked a couple bombers that just blew away one of your air bases (hypothetically). What are you going to do for your next trick, not track the B-2s that are going to take out every government building in Beijing (again, hypothetically)? At least the USAF treats the Russian Air Force, even in their degraded state, with enough professional courtesy to do a peaceful intercept of Bear bombers when they do a training overflight of Guam.

heh, you registered in this forum just to come bashing PLAAF? blaming a 12 year-old incident for this week´s B-52 flight? why would china need to intercept those bombers? they were 500 km away from china. How can chinese detect B2, especially from a long distance? And what does USAF procedures to RuAF have to do with PLAAF?

Which would surprise nobody in the US. The question I have, however, is if the PRC leadership thinks the US would stand for it. Or if they're so divorced from reality that they actually think the PLA stands a snowball's chance in hell if the PRC's leadership refuses to listen to reason. Saving face is all well and good, but it won't save that face from being kicked in if it's taken too far.

what do you mean by this?
 
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cirvine11

New Member
After the last few days' events, I think I have gotten a better feel for China's strategy with regards to its ADIZ.

I think most of us wrongly followed the western media's alarmist hype and thought that China was intending to take an almost Russian like approach and go toe-to-toe with America and Japan and give them a little taste of their own medicine and treat American, and Japanese especially, military aircraft in the same confrontational and aggressive manner as they have treated Chinese military aircraft operating in international airspace.

However, that was never China's style, and rather mark a shift in strategy, what we have seen is a continuation of past Chinese trends of being firm but subtle.

China knew right from the start that the usual suspects would get all annoyed and sing the old China threat song, so China used that predictablilty and turned it against them.

China knew that its detractors in the west would immediately assume the worst of its intentions when it declared the ADIZ, so it was deliberately vague during the announcement to allow the rabidly anti-China elements in the western press and governments the wiggle room they needed to make all sorts of scary predictions and whip up a sense of fear and tension. The more hysterical the western media and Japan got, the more calm and relaxed China behaved, and the more starkly the reality and the projections clashed. At the end of the day, no matter how well you spin a story, if you are constantly shown to be wrong, odds are you are going to loose influence and even your job. Maybe that won't happen that much in the western press, but I would like to think the US military values their analysis being right more than them telling the brass what they like to hear.

Practically, rather than allow itself to be led around the nose chasing after every probe by foreign air forces, the PLAAF has opted to calmly and professionally conduct its patrols in a non-confrontational manner, exactly the way one would emply an ADIZ as an ADIZ rather than as a pretext to intimidate foreign military aircraft flying in the zone.

Those B52s were a test by America of China's intentions. Their huge size and the duration they stayed within the new ADIZ meant that the PLAAF could not have not seen them, and could easily have intercepted them if it wished to. The US was also being subtle and coy by sending those B52s without escort and ordering them to only skirt the edge of the ADIZ and fly in a North-South heading along the zone's edge rather than towards China so as to show no hostile intent.

In a sense, rather than just being a belligerent act of provokation to proverbially flip Beijing the bird as it was being widely portrayed in the western media, the B52 flight was designed more as a subtle and practical test of intentions to see whether China's ADIZ was an attempt to limit foreign freedom of navigation within that declared zone as Washington initially feared.

Publicly, the US might be all tough talk and condemnations, but I think privately, they were very reassured by China's response to their test. And that may well have been a significant factor in the US government decision to publically advise its airlines to recognise and obey China's ADIZ as a sort of tacit acknowledgement of China's ADIZ and a signal to Beijing that so long as it does not try to interfere with non-threatening movement within its ADIZ, Washington can live with it even if they are not exactly happy about it.

I believe the advanced warning China gave South Korea and the similar non-confrontational response the PLAAF gave to probing South Korean fighters also greatly mollified the South Koreans, and while publically the US, South Korea and Japan may appear to form a united front against China's ADIZ, in reality, China has managed to isolate Japan as the only one who feels truly threatened and annoyed by the ADIZ. The Japanese are not stupid and they can see how the cards are falling and they feel their growing isolation on their opposition to China's ADIZ keenly, which is why they seem to be turning to ever more desperate long shots and acting ever more hysterical, which ironically is further isolating itself and moving it further away from the positions of the US and South Korea.

If Japan doesn't get a grip soon and keep carrying on as it has, there may well be a turning point whereby even the most rabid anti-China spin doctor in the western press or the most hawkish generals in the Pentegon cannot help but start seeing Japan as the source of tensions and troubles rather than China, and I think that is precisely China's game plan.

Plawolf, while I very much enjoy your posts on technical topics, in my opinion you could not be more wrong about Japan's "isolation". The belligerent nature of the announcement of the new ADIZ has sent shockwaves through the region. One only has to look at the nearly uniform response by regional governments to this event.

I think this ADIZ announcement was a miscalculation. If it was meant to isolate Japan, it has done the exact opposite. Australia, which has a massive trading relationship with China and no love for the Japanese, came out immediately and forcefully in their support for Japan.

Moreover, it seems like Beijing's actual capability to enforce its writ... is a stretch... at best. The PLAA is not yet ready to enforce this zone 24/7. IMO, you are correct that the north south flight of the B-52's was a test of Beijing's immediate intentions. And since that flight, normal-unannounced- patrol and recce flights by Japan, the US and S.Korea continue as we speak.

All things point to the international response being a surprise to Beijing. That it is a surprise to Beijing is most disturbing. Clearly, Beijing doesn't perceive the world around it as it is. I personally, and I think this is true for most Americans, don't care about the islands or who's flag flies on them. However, attempts to coerce a resolution through force are totally unacceptable to vast majority of Americans-and I suspect this is true in many allied nations.

Finally, Americans totally agree with China about Japan's actions during WWII. They were evil and justly punished. However, this idea of holding Japanese citizens, who were not alive and had nothing to do with WWII, accountable for the crimes of dead people, seems bizarre and unfair to most Americans.

It is true that Japan has a disturbingly nationalist Prime Minister. But he will leave the scene sooner or later. China, with hundreds of nuclear weapons, is not in danger from Japan. However, it seems to many of us, that the same cannot be said in the inverse sense.

And what is all this talk of the US attempting to encircle China and limit it? We are among your biggest trading partners... and have been THE major force in helping China engage the world economy since the early 1970's. All this talk of supposed US hostility towards China seems really odd to me. The facts just don't support it.

I had hoped the accent of Xi Jinping would lead to a more stable and less belligerent time between China and the US. I don't think many folks on this side of the Pacific still feel confident about that anymore. This is a real shame. China can create a self fulfilling prophecy by continuing down this belligerent road.
 

SampanViking

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As there is no new news today and there is a strong tendency to go offtopic. I think it is time to lock this thread for a period. Obviously if there is a new development we can re-open
 

Jeff Head

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THREAD RE-OPENED. No CHINA/JAPAN - JAPAN/CHINA - CHINA/US - US/CHINA war talk. Keep it civil. discuss the technical aspects to the Zone and current developments. No politics.

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News.nom.com said:
BEIJING — The United States and China are talking about the need for cooperation and dialogue as visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and China's president, Xi Jinping meet in the Chinese capital.

In a careful diplomatic dance, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vice President Joe Biden spoke openly about the challenges the two countries face in building a stronger relationship and trust.

But the two did not specifically mention China's recent, controversial decision to create an air defense identification zone that has loomed over Biden's trip to Asia.

In a brief encounter with reporters before their meeting, President Xi spoke about the need for the United States and China, with two of the world's biggest economies, to cooperate and address a growing range of profound and complex challenges.

Xi said the global economy had gone into a period of deep adjustment. He said regional hotspots kept popping up, as well as more pronounced global challenges such as climate change and energy security. The world was not a tranquil place, he added.

President Xi said China was willing and ready to work together with the United States to build a new model of great power relations. He also stressed the need for each side to respect each other's core interests and major concerns - a phrase that is frequently used to refer to interests such as China's territorial claims.

Vice President Biden said the thing that impressed him about China's new leader was his candid and constructive approach to developing a new relationship with Washington. Biden said both qualities were sorely needed in the relationship.

"The way I was raised was to believe that change presents opportunity. Opportunity on regional security, on a global level, opportunity on climate change and energy and a whole range of issues that the world needs to see change in the next decade or so," he said.

"If China really wants to build up a new model of great power relations, this is the last thing to do to build up a great power relationship. I think it is not controversial at all for China to establish this ADIZ. However, I think that international relations scholars and commentators both in China and outside of China agree that the timing and scope of the ADIZ are too controversial," he said.

During Biden's first stop in Asia, the issue dominated discussions in Tokyo. While there, the vice president talked about the strength of Washington's close alliance with Japan and voiced deep U.S. concern about the air zone.

He also promised to raise the issue "in great specificity" during his visits with Chinese leaders, including President Xi.

Biden has also suggested both sides establish "confidence-building measures, including emergency communications channels," to help reduce tensions. China said that it was willing to discuss the issue with Japan, but certain countries were overreacting to its decision and distorting the move.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that China established the zone to safeguard its national security and did so in line with national laws. He said the United States and Japan should regard this in an objective way and that it was is not China that has changed the status quo, but Japan.

City University of Hong Kong political science professor Joseph Cheng said Biden was trying to maintain a difficult balance by providing assurances to Washington's long-term ally Japan, while also stressing the importance of U.S.-China relations. He said the United States would like to act as a mediator between the two countries.

"A quiet mediating role is definitely welcomed and I do believe that the Vice President will act along these lines at this stage. A formal mediating role may be a little bit difficult because traditionally Chinese authorities do not want to involve a third country, especially a major power in a bilateral dispute," he said.

Further dialogue could also be complicated by Japan's refusal to formally recognize a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, something it views as a weakening of its position.

Joseph Cheng said that while all parties understood the dangers of war and the risks that escalating tensions pose, domestic pressures made it difficult for China and Japan to compromise.

"Obviously, on the part of China and Japan, both governments are very much under the pressure of domestic nationalism and their leaders do not want to be seen as being weak in dealing with each other," he said.

In recent days, China has made efforts to ease tensions over the zone. On the eve of Biden's arrival, the Defense Ministry released a statement stressing the area is not a no-fly zone nor is it a sign that China is expanding its territorial airspace. The statement said surveillance in the area remains necessary, but the use of fighter jets would not be necessary in most cases.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Further dialogue could also be complicated by Japan's refusal to formally recognize a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, something it views as a weakening of its position.

I think it's time for Shinzo Abe and Japan to quit pretending and start admitting the reality. The more of this news coming out to the world the more it will expose the Japanese play at hand. People will start searching for the history behind this debate and will find out that time is not on Japan's side. Japan has other island disputes with its other neighbors as well, and people around the world would start questioning the why Japan are so adamant about defending this certain "status quo" position.
 

Jeff Head

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I think it's time for Shinzo Abe and Japan to quit pretending and start admitting the reality. The more of this news coming out to the world the more it will expose the Japanese play at hand. People will start...questioning the why Japan are so adamant about defending this certain "status quo" position.
Japan is consistantly sticking with its policy that the islands are theirs.

They believe that since the islands were not physically taken from them after Wolrd War II by the victorious Allies as represented by the US (while many other islands they "owned" before and during the war were taken away, that they retained those islands as a part of Japan. They have operated under that understanding (from their perspective) for 68 years.

In the US we say they have "administered" the islands and disputes should be settled through negotiations. Japan's perspective has always been, in their eyes that they "owned," the islands, and as owners, of course they administered them.

That is their position. The do not intend to budge from it from what I can see.

Once something is established and operating for this long...it is hard to reverse it, especially when there are no grieved parties/citizens/nationals who atre impacted by it staying that way.

For example, if there had been Chinese citizens living on thos islands that the Japanese conquered or "administered," then it would be a no brainer and probably enver would have occurred the way it did. but there weren't. Back in 1945, these were just deserted, unoccupied small islands with no one living there and no installation on them...just as they are today.

Most people in the world today (poutside of China and Japan), upon looking at it, will just say...ah, why bother with it? They are unoccupied, deserted little islands that Japan has administered since before I was born. Why cause an uproar over them?

I am not saying that is necessarily right, or legal...but it is the way it is, and the way it has been for decades...and nobody is being put out or damaged by it.

With the current situation, it seems like things are going to settle down to the PRC operating its ADIZ and keeping a strong surveillance on the Zone and identifying any threats against the mainland and responding to those.

This means there will be a lot more PRC military air traffic throughout the zone, including in the vicinity of the islands. I expect it will boil down to Japan just ignoring the zone and the activity associated with it.

Until and unless either a strong coalition of nations, or the US, basically tells the Japanese to sit down and negotiate...I do not think they will do it. And given what I said above about how most people are going to feel about it...I do not see such a coalition or imperative developing to do so.

So, IMHO, it is likely that the ADIZ will become an ADIZ for China like the other ADIZs around the world are for the nations who establish them.
 

Blitzo

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In recent days, China has made efforts to ease tensions over the zone. On the eve of Biden's arrival, the Defense Ministry released a statement stressing the area is not a no-fly zone nor is it a sign that China is expanding its territorial airspace. The statement said surveillance in the area remains necessary, but the use of fighter jets would not be necessary in most cases.

"Ease tensions"???

Good lord, anyone with half a brain and a ten year olds reading comprehension should have been able to see this is what they meant the whole time.
It was the media that as construing the ADIZ as some sort of unilateral territory grab that was only done by pariah states.
 
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