On Wednesday, May 31, China strongly rejected the US version of an incident involving planes from the two countries over the South China sea. The previous day, the US Indo-Pacific Command had released a video and announced that a Chinese military jet had made an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” near a US military aircraft. The incident, which supposedly took place on May 26, comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two nations.
According to the version presented by the US military command, a Chinese J-16 “flew directly in front of the nose” of a US RC-135 over the South China Sea, forcing the US plane to “fly through its wake turbulence.”
The US command insisted that the RC-135, which is a reconnaissance aircraft or more simply put a spy plane, was conducting “safe and routine operations” through international airspace in the South China Sea. The US released the video of the intercept but did not mention its exact location or distance from the Chinese coast.
It added that the US “will continue to fly, sail, and operate — safely and responsibly — wherever international law allows, and the US Indo-Pacific Joint Force will continue to fly in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law.”
According to a statement released by the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command on Wednesday, May 31, the RC-135 was found “intentionally intruding” into the PLA’s training area while the PLA Navy’s Flotilla 17 was conducting a routine exercise in the South China Sea. China also did not indicate the approximate location of the intercept.
According to a report by China’s Global Times, Flotilla 17, an aircraft carrier, later passed through the Taiwan Straits on Saturday, according to defense officials of the government in Taiwan, indicating that the intercept had been much closer to mainland China than what the US indicated.
The report further stated that as per sources from the PLA as well as open-source intelligence, the RC-135 was very likely flying less than 50 km away from the city of Jieyang in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.
While Chinese officials are yet to confirm the details of the location, the PLA Southern Theater Command has accused the US of sabotaging peace in the region with its statements over the incident.
“We sternly urge the US to restrict its frontal maritime and aerial forces’ actions and strictly abide by related international laws and relevant agreements, so as to prevent maritime or aerial accidents from happening, or all consequences are for the US to bear,” said senior colonel Zhang Nandong, a spokesperson of the PLA Command.
Tuesday’s statements by the US Indo-Pacific Command were followed by mainstream media reports that also claimed aggression by a Chinese fighter jet, but underplayed key details like the location of the intercept and the fact that the US aircraft in question was a spy plane. These were only briefly mentioned in reports, which failed to question why a US spy plane was in the South China Sea where the US has neither territory nor any territorial claims.
On the other hand, China, despite its territorial disputes with some of its neighbors in the South China Sea, holds several uncontested territories in the region. Over the past few years, the US military presence in the South China Sea, supposedly at the behest of its allies in the region, has only provoked the Chinese government and led to heightened tensions.
As per a report by the South China Sea Probing Initiative, in the year 2022, the US sent over a thousand sorties of large reconnaissance aircraft of various types to the South China Sea. The US’ increasing military presence in the region has increased chances of military encounters with China.
Interestingly, parallels can be drawn between this incident and the paranoid reaction by the US over a Chinese high-altitude weather balloon that was blown into US airspace earlier this year.
