After Challenges, China Appears to Backpedal on Air Zone
By JANE PERLEZ, NYT
BEIJING — China has permitted rare street protests and sent armadas of fishing boats to show its growing national interest in a small string of islands in the East China Sea. Earlier this year, the Chinese military locked its radar on a Japanese navy vessel.
Each step seemed like a measured escalation in the long-running territorial dispute, intended to press Japan to negotiate over jurisdiction of the islands. But they also seemed calibrated to avoid a sharp international backlash — or to raise expectations too high at home.
But by imposing a new air defense zone over the islands last weekend, Beijing may have miscalculated. It provoked a quick, pointed challenge from the United States, set off alarm bells among Asian neighbors and created a frenzy of nationalist expression inside China on hopes that the new leadership team in Beijing would push for a decisive resolution of the longstanding dispute.
On Wednesday, after the Pentagon sent two B-52 bombers defiantly cruising around China’s new air defense zone for more than two hours, Beijing appeared to backpedal. The overflights went unchallenged, and some civilian airlines ignored China’s new assertion of air rights.
(More here.)
BEIJING — China has permitted rare street protests and sent armadas of fishing boats to show its growing national interest in a small string of islands in the East China Sea. Earlier this year, the Chinese military locked its radar on a Japanese navy vessel.
Each step seemed like a measured escalation in the long-running territorial dispute, intended to press Japan to negotiate over jurisdiction of the islands. But they also seemed calibrated to avoid a sharp international backlash — or to raise expectations too high at home.
But by imposing a new air defense zone over the islands last weekend, Beijing may have miscalculated. It provoked a quick, pointed challenge from the United States, set off alarm bells among Asian neighbors and created a frenzy of nationalist expression inside China on hopes that the new leadership team in Beijing would push for a decisive resolution of the longstanding dispute.
On Wednesday, after the Pentagon sent two B-52 bombers defiantly cruising around China’s new air defense zone for more than two hours, Beijing appeared to backpedal. The overflights went unchallenged, and some civilian airlines ignored China’s new assertion of air rights.
(More here.)
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