A thousand kilometers to north of Nanjing, in a windowless conference room, the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China gathered. The room was arranged as usual for their meeting. Name cards arranged in a never-changing order sat with parade-ground precision down each side of a long, dark, oval of mahogany. A pad of paper and two sharpened pencils sat ready for each committee member, although the pads were never used.
At the head of the room, on a large screen, the wizened face of General Fan, head of the Nanjing Military Region, loomed over sets of tea prepared for Admiral Sun Jianguo, Exective Vice Chairman and day-to-day boss of the CMC, and Army General Yuan Kun, the Chief of Staff.
Other senior officers and officials filed into the room, dropping their own notepads at the usual places along the sides of the wide table. The room felt crowded, though it was actually less full than usual. It had been cleared of the aides and staff officers who normally sat against the side walls, ready to provide their bosses with the details of any issue.
General Fan was not the only one who wondered why they were not at the table with the generals and Party officials.
He recognized why the room was crowded, though. Even through his webcam, the tension was so thick, he could almost cut it with a knife. The VIPs gathered in small clumps, immersed in separate conversations, but the tone of chatter was far from banal.
In the last twenty minutes, General Fan had hurriedly conferred with the Chief of Staff, General Yuan Kun. The Chief of Staff was the senior operations officer in the Chinese military. Together, they went over the details and discussed likely questions and answers on operational matters that he and Yuan would address at the 1000 meeting.
Over the past five years, General Fan had learned that General Yuan liked to look as though he were in control and could handle every question brought up by his boss, the Executive Vice Chairman, or any of the dozen or so officers and Party officials gathered around the large conference table. But Fan also knew that Yuan expected him to jump in quickly if Yuan's sometimes shaky grasp of relevant details threatened to become apparent. As had become glaringly obvious over the years, when General Yuan dumped a problem into a Military Region commander's lap, he left it there.
Far better to prep the kindly gentleman so he could blather his way past any uncertainty and then clean up problems later, Fan thought. He pawed at his tablet again, checking his slides and the corrected version of Colonel Wu's briefing notes. As he glanced up, Executive Vice Chairman Sun Yan marched through the door with the Chief of Staff, and unexpectedly, the General Secretary himself. Admiral Sun motioned the General Secretary to take his own chair while a staff officer hurriedly brought another ot the head of the table for the Vice Chairman as the attendees took their places.
The Executive Vice Chairman sat down, looked at the Chief of Staff, and commanded immediately, "Let's hear it." His sharp tone brought all eyes to General Yuan he stepped up to the podium.
"General Secretary, Vice Chairman, esteemed comrades, I'll begin with a video clip we recorded ten minutes ago. Then I'll provide a brief situation report on this morning's incidents. General Fan will provide greater detail on the operational background, and then the Executive Vice Chairman will give us his thoughts on future operations." He looked down at his script while his staffer swapped General Fan's face for the video of Ishii Shinobu.
"This clip," Yuan continued, "was recorded at 0920 hours from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, NHK."
The Chief of Staff nodded at his staffer and Ishii Shinobu's smile appeared, stretched a half-meter wide. Subtitles scrolled below it.
"As some of you may know, my son, Ishii Akira, joined the JASDF to serve his Emperor and people last year. Recently, he has been defending our sovereign islands against the unrestrained aggression of our western neighbor. Some time ago, I was notified that he--my son, my firstborn--was shot down by forces of that... that country which you are all too aware of, and of which I shall not name.
For far too long, we have suffered under the aggression of our revanchist enemies and, I daresay, the occasional negligence of our friends. I wish to let you know that if I am elected to lead our people in these next tumultuous years, I will draw the line. No more. I will not apologize for Japan. Never. And should any of those neighbors use our common history to justify their aggression, I will stop at nothing to teach them a lesson, a lesson to respect the absolute safety of the Japanese people, and the absolute integrity of our territory. I give you my word as a loyal subject of our Emperor, and father to a true hero."
The tape ended abruptly and General Fan's face reappeared. While Yuan returned to his notes, the commission sat silent, except for the Chairman, who shifted in his chair, reached for a pencil, and began to calmly take paper notes.
The Chief of Staff resumed his presentation. "This morning, two of our fighters were engaged with their Japanese counterparts in a demonstration of sovereignty over the disputed islands. One of the Japanese fighters suffered an accident and crashed, which the other Japanese fighter interpreted as due to hostile action. The other Japanese pilot fired upon and destroyed one of our fighters, and was in turn engaged and destroyed by our second pilot, Captain Kang Zongqi of the Ox Squadron, 771st Regiment, 3rd Fighter Division." On cue, a map of the islands with red and white crosses appeared beside General Fan's looming face. "Immediately after the engagement, the Japanese and Americans scrambled eight fighter planes to interdict Captain Kang. After contacting home base, he was notified of the situation and ordered to eject."
"At this time, our satellites have spotted two Japanese destroyers operating in the vicinity, and the US 7th Fleet is making emergency preparations to sally forth from Yokosuka Naval Base. Stealth bomber assets at Andersen Air Force Base also appear to be going on high alert."
"In addition to the American and Japanese response, there are three further factors that complicate the situation." Yuan paused for a drink of water. "First, as the video hints at, one of the Japanese pilots--we are not sure which--was the son of Ishii Shinobu, the far-right leader of the Japan Restoration Party, and the likely Prime Minister following the Japanese elections in the next few months. Captain Kang did not report any parachutes from the three other downed airplanes, which means his son is likely dead. This will likely make future diplomacy with Japan extremely difficult."
"Second, there is no hard evidence to corroborate with Captain Kang's version of events, since all aircraft ditched in disputed waters. This means that the Japanese or Americans may be able to spin an alternate version of events as the truth, at least until we recover a black box or flight recorder."
"Third, Captain Kang is still floating in disputed waters. We can communicate him, but his food and water supplies will only last him for another two and a half days, and we might, for the same reason as the second issue, have problems trying to rescue him."
"General Secretary, Vice Chairman," Yuan continued, "we have put our sea- and land-based air-defense networks on alert, scrambled interceptors and AWACS to patrol over international waters in the East China Sea, and tasked a team from the Nanjing MR to draft up a non-escalatory rescue plan for Captain Kang. We've also sent our version of events to our attaches in Tokyo and Washington, and tasked them with getting a pulse on the reactions of the Japanese and American national security establishments. These responses have been limited to defensive preparations only, so as not to unduly alarm the Americans--we are treating the incident as a regrettable multiple mid-air collision, and downplaying the shoot-down angle." Yuan put down his notes, a signal for questions.
The General Secretary sat up. "Admiral Sun, General Yuan, that message can't hold given Ishii's remarks. The Politburo will have to make a public statement confirming briefly what we know and what we're doing about it. And we'll have to make that statement today."
"I agree, General Secretary. With your blessing, I'll task a member of the CMC staff to work with your team on that."
General Fan chimed in. "The folks working on the rescue plan already include a press officer, so they'd be a nice addition to whatever roster you're putting in place to handle the PR angle."
The General Secretary nodded. "Good idea. General Fan, get them on board as well." Then he paused, glanced down at his tablet, and looked back up. "Okay, here are our priorities: first, we need to avoid escalating this incident any further. Everyone here has done an admirable job of keeping this low-key, let's keep up the good work. Second, we need to rescue Captain Kang--both for his sake and for our country's sake. If the Japanese pluck him out of the water or off the island, it would make the rest of the world into think they own the islands. General Yuan, I assume you know what to do?"
The Vice Chairman nodded.
"Good. On the civil side, we need to get our message out in front of the world with whatever evidence we have--long-range radar records, anything. And--someone needs to figure out what this means for Sino-Japanese relations over the next year. I'm not convinced this is going to completely wreck things, at least not yet. Vice-Premier Zhang Shenghan will be in charge of the civil side." He turned to face the room. "All of you might remember him as the bright kid who cleaned up the mess at Shenyang twelve years ago."
Then he pushed back his chair and stood up. "Thank you, Admiral Sun, General Yuan, General Fan, and the rest of you as well. Admiral Sun, after you meet with the CMC staff, meet me at Zhongnanhai with whoever you've tasked this to. I'll let you know the exact time."
