Chinese president rebuffs Biden on air zone

BEIJING – Giving no ground, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US Vice President Joe Biden traded strong arguments on Wednesday over China‘s contentious new air defense identification zone (ADIZ), with no indication of progress toward defusing a situation that is raising anxieties across Asia and beyond.

Though Biden made clear the deep concern of the US and other countries during the five hours of talks – themselves highly unusual for an American vice president and Chinese president – Xi vigorously made his case, too, for China‘s declaration of new rules concerning a strip of airspace more than 600 miles long above disputed islands in the East China Sea.

The US worries that China‘s demand that pilots entering the airspace file flight plans with Beijing could lead to an accident or a confrontation spiraling dangerously out of control. Now it is up to the Chinese to take steps to lower tensions, and “it‘s a question of behavior and action,” said a US official, who briefed reporters on the private talks.

The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Though Biden expressed no disappointment in public remarks, the outcome of his visit was not what the US might have hoped for.

A day earlier, the Vice President had stood shoulder to shoulder in Tokyo with the leader of Japan, China‘s regional rival, pledging to raise Washington‘s concerns with Xi directly. But as he arrived in Beijing, an editorial in the state-run China Daily charged Washington with “turning a blind eye to Tokyo‘s provocations,” warning that Biden would hit a dead end should he come “simply to repeat his government‘s previous erroneous and one-sided remarks.”

Late Wednesday in Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called China‘s announcement of the zone “destabilizing“ and complained that it had come “so unilaterally and so immediately without any consultation.”

“That‘s not a wise course of action to take for any country,“ Hagel said at a Pentagon news conference.

Neither Biden nor Xi mentioned the dispute as they appeared briefly before reporters at the end of their first round of talks. But in private, the issue came up at length at the beginning and again near the end of the long-planned meeting, senior Obama administration officials said.

The typically upbeat Biden appeared subdued as he reflected on the complexity of the relationship between China and the US, two world powers seeking closer ties despite wide ideological gulfs they have been unable to bridge.

“This new model of major-country cooperation ultimately has to be based on trust, and a positive notion about the motive of one another,“ Biden said, flanked by top advisers in a resplendent meeting room steps away from Tiananmen Square.

The calibrated public comments played down the deep strains permeating the relationship between the world‘s two largest economies.

Earlier, however, Biden told Chinese youngsters waiting to get visitor visas processed at the US embassy that American children are rewarded rather than punished for challenging the status quo, an implicit criticism of the Chinese government‘s authoritarian rule.

“I hope you learn that innovation can only occur where you can breathe free, challenge the government, challenge religious leaders,“  Biden said.

Xi, for his part, stuck to the script – at least in public. The Chinese leader touted the benefits of closer US-China ties as he laid out “profound and complex changes“ underway in Asia and across the globe.

“The world, as a whole, is not tranquil,“ Xi said.

Behind closed doors, Xi made his own case for why China‘s action to establish the air zone is appropriate, said the US administration officials.

Xi listened earnestly as Biden presented his own arguments, the officials said, but it was unclear what impact there might have been.

The simmering dispute over the tiny islands and the airspace above them has trailed  Biden throughout his weeklong trip to Asia. After meeting with China‘s premier and speaking to business leaders yesterday, he was scheduled to fly to Seoul – another neighbor whose air defense zone now overlaps China‘s.

Other extensions

Senior analysts at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank, have also said that China may extend its air defense identification zone to the South China Sea and Yellow Sea depending on world reaction to its newly declared ADIZ over the East China Sea seen as an attempt to bolster its claim to the disputed Senkakus/Diaoyu islands.

In a media conference call on Wednesday on the brewing crisis in the East China Sea between Japan and China over the disputed islands known as the Senkakus to the Japanese and the Diaoyu to the Chinese, Sheila Smith, one of three analysts who participated in the call, said she expected there will be a coordinated diplomatic coalition to urge China to pull back into the fold of international norms, in terms of aviation management.

The reaction that China gets and the way it decides to police the ADIZ over the East China Sea will go a long way to showing us what the ultimate Chinese intentions may be in the South China Sea and Yellow Sea, she said.

Asked if an ADIZ might be set up over the South China Sea where a number of countries including the Philippines and Vietnam are involved in disputes with China over maritime territory, Chinese Ambassador Ma Keqing told reporters in Manila on Monday it was Bejing’s right to decide where and when to set up a new air defense identification zone.

The Pentagon said it does not recognize the newly declared ADIZ for military aircraft but the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) has urged US civilian airliners to communicate with the Chinese on flight plans to avoid any possible incident with Chinese fighter jets. The Japanese have urged their civilian aircraft not to conform.

Smith referred to the shooting down of a Korean Air Lines plane by Soviet interceptors in 1983 over the Sea of Japan that killed all 269 passengers and crew abroad and said the FAA was probably alert to the danger faced by US airliners coming in contact with Chinese jet fighters seeking to implement the ADIZ over the East China Sea.

– AP, Jose Katigbak (STAR Washington bureau)