US and Chinese military officials will hold talks on rules of behavior at the Pentagon today and tomorrow, a US official said, days after the US denounced what it called a “dangerous” Chinese jet intercept of a US Navy patrol plane.
On Tuesday last week, a Chinese fighter pilot flew acrobatic maneuvers around the US Navy’s P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine and reconnaissance plane, crossing over and under it in international airspace over the South China Sea, the Pentagon said.
At one point, the jet flew wingtip-to-wingtip about 9m from the Poseidon, then performed a barrel roll over the top of it.
The US defense official said other close intercepts occurred in March, April and May.
While this week’s discussions at the Pentagon were planned long before the recent incidents, they touch on issues at the core of the US concerns about Chinese military behavior: that a Chinese provocation could spiral into a broader crisis sparked by a military miscalculation in the disputed territory.
China’s sovereignty claims over the strategic stretch of mineral-rich water off its southern coast and to the east of mainland Southeast Asia set it directly against US allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia also lay claim to parts of the disputed area.
The meetings involve a working group to discuss existing multilateral standards of behavior for air and maritime activities, the defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Assistant Deputy Chief of US Naval Operations Rear Admiral James Foggo is among the US military officials attending, the official said.
It was not immediately clear which Chinese officials would participate.
The US and Chinese militaries have boosted their contacts in recent years amid recognition that, as China’s economic interests continue to expand, it will play a bigger security role in the world and have more interactions with the US military.
Still, the recent intercepts show that those increased contacts have not eliminated friction between the two.
In April 2001, a similar aggressive intercept of a US EP-3E spy plane by a Chinese F-8 fighter in the same area resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the US plane to make an emergency landing at a base on China’s Hainan Island.
The 24 US air crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologized for the incident.
That encounter soured US-Chinese relations in the early days of former US president George W. Bush’s first term.
China has denied wrongdoing in the latest incident and blamed the US, citing “large-scale and highly frequent close-in reconnaisssance.”
US Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki responded by saying the US operated “in a transparent manner.”
“We make other countries, including China, aware of our plans,” Psaki said.
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