US senators slam China air zone

WASHINGTON – Democratic and Republican senators are demanding that China rescind its new air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over Japanese-held islands in the East China Sea and the sharp tone risks antagonizing Beijing, The Hill newspaper reported.

The Hill, which describes itself as a comprehensive source of US congressional news, said several Republicans have taken issue with the administration’s recommendation that US air carriers abide by China’s request to be informed of all flights through the zone.

It quoted Sen. Marco Rubio, a prospective Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 election, as saying, “I don’t think our government should be telling them (US air carriers) to do that because it sends confusing messages.” US military aircraft routinely ignore the ADIZ.

“If the Chinese are willing to shoot down a civilian aircraft on an illegitimate claim, then they’re a criminal government,” Rubio told The Hill in an interview.

The sharp tone risks antagonizing China, which blames the United States and its much-vaunted “pivot to Asia” for rising tensions in the area, The Hill said.

Staff writer Julian Pecquet, who visited China in a report on the newspaper’s website on Thursday, quoted Chinese military officials as saying the US decision to beef up US military presence in Asia has emboldened its allies such as Japan and the Philippines to step up their challenge to China’s decades-old territorial claims in the East and South China Seas.

“The rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific played a role in encouraging some of the allies to take a more provocative, more aggressive stance,” said an official with China’s Academy of Military Science in Beijing.

“These disputes may not be problems the US would like to see, but their actions to prioritize military factors may make those already existing disputes become more and more heated,” the official added.

“Although [the US] still states that it has no position on the territorial dispute,” the Chinese military official said, “to me it just seems absurd that it would commit itself to defend a few small islands which it has no position about.”

China feels threatened by the US decision to move more ships and open up small outposts throughout the region, sources in Beijing told The Hill.

It said the congressional hard line against China in the showdown over a handful of tiny Pacific islands was complicating the Obama administration’s efforts to manage the issue.

Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations panel on East Asia, joined three other committee leaders of both parties in a letter telling China’s ambassador to Washington to back off earlier this month.

“We urge your government not to implement this ADIZ as announced, and to refrain from taking similar provocative actions elsewhere in the region,” they wrote. “There is nothing for China to gain by undermining regional stability and threatening the peace and prosperity that is the shared objective of all Asia-Pacific nations.”

Several countries including the Philippines and Vietnam are involved in disputes with China over maritime territory in the South China Sea and they fear Beijing might impose an ADIZ similar to what it clamped over the East China Sea to bolster its claim to disputed islands known as Senkakus to the Japanese and the Diaoyu to the Chinese.