In his world, nothing happened with China except from January 2017 to January 2021.
I still remember 20 years ago when the U.S. crashed a spy plane around them and the Chinese said they'll give it back when they were good and ready.
Link???
I don’t remember no spy plane fiasco
Colin.....because I
know you ain't reading all this shit!!
U.S. PLANE IN CHINA AFTER IT COLLIDES WITH CHINESE JET
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A United States Navy spy plane on a routine surveillance mission near the Chinese coast collided on Sunday with a Chinese fighter jet that was closely tailing it. The American plane made an emergency landing in China, and the United States said it was seeking the immediate return of the 24 crew members, all said to be in good condition, and of the sophisticated aircraft and all its intelligence equipment.
The midair crash occurred about 50 miles southeast of China's Hainan Island, in what American officials described as international waters. The EP-3E Aries II aircraft, which had taken off from an American air base in Okinawa, Japan, issued a Mayday call but managed to make an emergency landing on the island. The Chinese plane crashed into the waters below.
China's foreign ministry spokesman, Zhu Bangzao, said a search was under way for the pilot, and Chinese state television broadcast an angry statement on Sunday night saying that ''the U.S. side has total responsibility for this event.''
But Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command, said Chinese planes had become increasingly aggressive in tailing American military aircraft in recent months, even prompting the United States to register a protest. ''It's not a normal practice to play bumper cars in the air,'' he said.
In Washington, President Bush's advisers, finding themselves dealing for the first time with a sensitive military incident with the Chinese, went to some lengths to avoid ascribing blame. And instead, they immediately focused their attention on an airport in the city of Lingshui, on Hainan, where the damaged plane was sitting on the tarmac. Whether the crew members were still on board was unclear.
''The question now is do we have access to the crew, when do we get the crew back, and how do we get the aircraft back,'' said one administration official. ''This is going to be a test of everyone's ability to stay cool and work things out.''
The White House said diplomats from the American Embassy in Beijing, and other American officials based in China, were traveling to Hainan and would seek to escort the crew members out of the country and make sure the Chinese did not inspect or remove the equipment aboard the plane. It was not clear if the Americans erased any data they had collected or sought to disable any of their equipment.
The incident comes at a particularly sensitive moment of transition in Washington's relations with Beijing. Within weeks, President Bush is to make a decision on whether to sell sophisticated arms and radar equipment to Taiwan, and how the two countries handle this incident may color the internal debate within the Bush administration over what kind of technology to provide to the Taiwanese.
Chinese officials, meanwhile, are likely to use the incident to take their measure of the Bush administration. They are already highly sensitive to what they believe is a tougher posture toward China -- one that views China as a military competitor first and a trade partner second.
Even before the Sunday incident, the first interactions between the new administration and Beijing's leaders have been difficult, marked by the recent defection to the United States of a high-level Chinese Army colonel, and China's detention of visiting American scholars.
Now, with a Chinese Air Force pilot missing and one of America's most sophisticated surveillance planes sitting lame on a tarmac -- a tempting intelligence bonanza for the Chinese military -- Mr. Bush and his Chinese counterpart, President Jiang Zemin, are faced with a new diplomatic tangle before they have even met.
''This has the potential to become a major international incident, especially if the Chinese try to examine what's on the plane or to make the crew get off,'' said David Shambaugh, an expert on the Chinese military at George Washington University. ''This is a sophisticated surveillance aircraft, and the last thing the military wants is the Chinese crawling all over it. It's loaded with electronic surveillance gear that can hear and see into the mainland.''
Already, China's rough and tumble Internet chat rooms -- always a sounding board for nationalistic sentiments -- were filled mostly with angry invective, but also calls to stay calm.
''Insist on pursuing the U.S. pilot for criminal responsibility,'' said one posting on the People's Daily Great Power Forum and ''Don't give the plane back -- it costs over $100 million to get one of these.''
Two years ago, after NATO planes accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three, many Chinese believed that the act was deliberate and complained that President Jiang had not stood up to American aggression. That incident provoked angry rock-throwing demonstrations outside the American Embassy here, and was resolved with millions of dollars in reparations.
The details of what happened today, and why it happened, are sketchy. While there is little doubt that neither side intended for the spy plane and the Chinese fighter to collide, the two countries have increasingly been involved in a dangerous aerial cat-and-mouse game that has echoes of periodic incidents with the Soviet Union during the cold war.
While American officials say that Chinese ''chaser'' planes have recently gotten closer to American surveillance craft, it is unclear whether that is a result of a political decision from Beijing, a military decision by the Chinese Air Force or the judgments of Chinese pilots. And while it is unclear what caused the accident -- the Chinese said late Sunday that the American plane veered suddenly -- the EP-3 is a lumbering, slow-moving propeller plane that is significantly less maneuverable than a fighter aircraft.
Not surprisingly, the two sides seemed to be taking a different view of what happened high above the South China Sea.
Officials with the United States Pacific Command stressed that the plane, which took off from Kadena air base in Japan, was on a routine mission, no different from many others it has flown in the area. While they insisted the plane was in international air space, the American officials did not give the exact coordinates of the aircraft at the time of the collision.
While releasing few details, Cmdr. Rex Totty of the Pacific Command said the collision ''had the appearances of having been an accident'' rather than a provocation, noting that United States planes are sometimes tailed on missions near China. But he added: ''It is typically true than when military aircraft are shadowing they keep a sensible distance so that this sort of thing doesn't happen. But the Chinese do have a history of getting close.''
About a year ago, another EP-3 was trailed closely by Chinese jets off Zhejiang Province, although the Chinese jets ceased pursuit when the United States plane left the area, one expert said.
An American Embassy spokesman in Beijing said American officials had been in contact with the Chinese government throughout the day. The American ambassador to Beijing, Joseph Prueher, is no stranger to this kind of mission: he is a retired Navy admiral who once commanded the United States forces in the Pacific, and therefore had operational control over the spy missions off the Chinese coast.
Ambassador Prueher said on Sunday that ''it appears also the Chinese have lost an aircraft, and we're sorry that occurred.''
Ambassador Prueher has worked hard during the last two years to encourage better communications between the two militaries. He has won the respect of many in the Chinese military during his stay here, which is scheduled to end in a month. The contacts he has made in the Chinese military may now be put to the test.
Tonight, the Chinese side put responsibility for the collision firmly with the United States. ''Tailing and monitoring American military reconnaissance aircraft along China's coast belongs to proper aviation activity and is in keeping with international conventions,'' said Mr. Zhu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The ''direct cause'' of the collision, he said, was that ''the U.S. plane violated aviation rules and suddenly veered toward and approached the Chinese plane.'' In the ensuing collision, the nose and wing of the United States plane had clipped the Chinese fighter, he said, adding that the Chinese had issued ''a stern representation and protests to the U.S. side.''
American officials said they had no information yet about the condition of the plane or whether the Chinese were respecting its ''integrity'' -- a euphemism for not going on board.
People who answered the phone tonight at Lingshui Airport, on Hainan's southeastern coast, refused to give any details about the plane or even to confirm that it was a military airport; it is not listed in directories of commercial flights.
Mr. Zhu said China was making ''appropriate arrangements for the 24 crew members of the U.S. plane,'' which he said had ''entered Chinese airspace without permission and landed on a Chinese airfield.''
It was unclear if Mr. Zhu was suggesting that the plane was in Chinese airspace at the time of the collision or merely that it had entered Chinese airspace ''without permission'' in order to make its emergency landing.
China claims ownership of scattered islands in the South China Sea, and Chinese maps all carry a series of dark red bars around the sea, suggesting that it is part of China -- although Chinese officials have denied that interpretation of the country's boundaries. China has been engaged in a longstanding dispute with the Philippines over the Spratly Islands, more than 100 miles from China, as a result of such claims.
But international conventions state that territorial waters and airspace extend only 12 miles from land. As a matter of practice, foreign vessels and aircraft, whether military of commercial, generally operate freely in the South China Sea.
The incident is a potentially damaging one to relations for both sides.
While the Clinton administration carefully cultivated military-to-military ties with the Chinese and for a time called Beijing a ''strategic partner,'' a phrase that was later dropped, the Bush administration has said that it will treat China more as a competitor.
In the next few weeks President Bush is expected to make a decision on whether to sell Taiwan sophisticated weapons to buttress defenses on the island, over which Beijing claims sovereignty.
These include a ship-borne radar system, called the Aegis, that China fears could be used not only to help protect Taiwan but also as part of an American-designed ''theater missile defense'' that is ostensibly aimed at nations like North Korea. But China fears that it is also intended to undercut its small nuclear arsenal. Chinese leaders have expressed vigorous opposition to both the antimissile system and the possible Aegis sale, and suggested that they would react by building up their offensive ability.
Under President Bush, who has a strong constituency among conservatives in Congress who are suspicious of China's growing power, the Defense Department put a freeze on planned military exchanges with China, pending review of their utility.
''We have routinized communication channels between the militaries, and now there's a even a hot line between the two leaders'' of China and the United States, Professor Shambaugh said. ''This is the time when we'll see if they've really built any 'mutual understanding and trust.' '
US Navy EP-3E Aries II spy plane on routine surveillance mission over South China Sea near Chinese coast collides with Chinese fighter closely tailing it; makes emergency landing on China's Hainan Island, but Chinese plane crashes into sea; China says US bears total responsibility; US seeks...
www.nytimes.com
