08-28-2009, 11:45 AM
Stop the Military Surveillance, China Tells U.S.
Friday, August 28, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
![[Image: 53200.jpg]](http://media.cnsnews.com/resources/53200.jpg)
The ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable uses passive and active low frequency sonar arrays to detect and track undersea threats. The unarmed vessel was harassed by Chinese ships in the South China Sea earlier this year. (Photo: U.S. Navy)
(CNSNews.com) – China’s military wants the United States Navy to stop surveillance operations in waters and airspace near its territory, following a series of incidents this year in areas that Beijing views as within its zone of influence.
U.S. ships and aircraft have long carried out such missions, but confrontations in the South China Sea and waters off the Philippines this year have raised tensions.
The two nations differ over interpretations in international law regarding legitimate activities in the 200 nautical mile-wide exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that lies beyond countries’ 12 nautical mile territorial waters.
In bilateral talks this week, Chinese officials told their American counterparts that the U.S. should phase out the activities.
“China believes the constant U.S. military air and sea surveillance and survey operations in China’s exclusive economic zone had led to military confrontations between the two sides,” the national defense ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
The U.S. should “decrease and eventually stop such operations,” it said.
The talks were held in line with a bilateral confidence-building measure called the military maritime consultative agreement (MMCA), signed in 1998. Aimed at providing a forum for communication to help ensure safe operations on the high seas, the agreement was drawn up after two earlier incidents stoked tensions – the trailing of a Chinese sub by a U.S. anti-submarine aircraft in 1994 and the deployment two years later of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the Taiwan vicinity during a rise in tensions between China and Taiwan.
Seven annual meetings and 13 working group meetings have been held under the MMCA since 1998, according to Chinese reports.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides for “freedom of navigation and overflight” in EEZs. It says military activities inside EEZs must be “peaceful” and must not harm the coastal state’s environment or economic resources.
The U.S., which has not ratified UNCLOS, argues that the treaty permits free navigation in EEZs, while China contends that surveillance activity does not fall into the “peaceful” category. In 2002, Beijing passed legislation outlawing unauthorized surveillance activity in its EEZ.
A 2005 paper on the issue co-authored by a senior Chinese armed forces officer stated that “military and reconnaissance activities in the EEZ … encroach or infringe on the national security interests of the coastal State, and can be considered a use of force or a threat to use force against that State.”
‘Rules of the road’
U.N. Navy survey ships were harassed by Chinese naval and civilian vessels as well as military aircraft in the South China Sea and Yellow Sea in March and May – in one case 75 miles south of Hainan island, the location of a strategic Chinese Navy base which reportedly houses ballistic missile submarines.
Beijing said at the time that the unarmed ship, the USNS Impeccable, was carrying out “illegal surveying” in its EEZ, violating Chinese and international laws.
The U.S. Navy says the Impeccable is designed to detect quiet foreign diesel and nuclear-powered submarines and to map the seabed for future antisubmarine warfare purposes.
It tows two sonar systems, one emitting a low frequency pulse and a second “listening” to returning echoes. The equipment is used “to gather ocean acoustical data for antisubmarine warfare and rapidly transmit the information to the Navy for prompt analysis,” according to the Military Sealift Command.
During the incident in March, crewmembers of one of the Chinese vessels confronting the Impeccable used a grappling hook to try to snag the towed system.
U.S. Pacific Command head Navy Adm. Timothy Keating told a Senate committee hearing later that month that the confrontation was “a troubling indicator that China, particularly in the South China Sea, is behaving in an aggressive, troublesome manner and [is] not willing to abide by acceptable standards of behavior or ‘rules of the road,’”
The most serious incident of its type to have occurred in the region took place in April 2001, when a U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided in mid air with one of two Chinese jets that had been scrambled to track it. The Chinese pilot was killed and the American aircraft was made an emergency landing at a military airfield on Hainan island.
China held the 24-person crew for 11 days before they were allowed to return home. The plane was airlifted back to the U.S. later that year.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53199
Friday, August 28, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
The ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable uses passive and active low frequency sonar arrays to detect and track undersea threats. The unarmed vessel was harassed by Chinese ships in the South China Sea earlier this year. (Photo: U.S. Navy)
(CNSNews.com) – China’s military wants the United States Navy to stop surveillance operations in waters and airspace near its territory, following a series of incidents this year in areas that Beijing views as within its zone of influence.
U.S. ships and aircraft have long carried out such missions, but confrontations in the South China Sea and waters off the Philippines this year have raised tensions.
The two nations differ over interpretations in international law regarding legitimate activities in the 200 nautical mile-wide exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that lies beyond countries’ 12 nautical mile territorial waters.
In bilateral talks this week, Chinese officials told their American counterparts that the U.S. should phase out the activities.
“China believes the constant U.S. military air and sea surveillance and survey operations in China’s exclusive economic zone had led to military confrontations between the two sides,” the national defense ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
The U.S. should “decrease and eventually stop such operations,” it said.
The talks were held in line with a bilateral confidence-building measure called the military maritime consultative agreement (MMCA), signed in 1998. Aimed at providing a forum for communication to help ensure safe operations on the high seas, the agreement was drawn up after two earlier incidents stoked tensions – the trailing of a Chinese sub by a U.S. anti-submarine aircraft in 1994 and the deployment two years later of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the Taiwan vicinity during a rise in tensions between China and Taiwan.
Seven annual meetings and 13 working group meetings have been held under the MMCA since 1998, according to Chinese reports.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides for “freedom of navigation and overflight” in EEZs. It says military activities inside EEZs must be “peaceful” and must not harm the coastal state’s environment or economic resources.
The U.S., which has not ratified UNCLOS, argues that the treaty permits free navigation in EEZs, while China contends that surveillance activity does not fall into the “peaceful” category. In 2002, Beijing passed legislation outlawing unauthorized surveillance activity in its EEZ.
A 2005 paper on the issue co-authored by a senior Chinese armed forces officer stated that “military and reconnaissance activities in the EEZ … encroach or infringe on the national security interests of the coastal State, and can be considered a use of force or a threat to use force against that State.”
‘Rules of the road’
U.N. Navy survey ships were harassed by Chinese naval and civilian vessels as well as military aircraft in the South China Sea and Yellow Sea in March and May – in one case 75 miles south of Hainan island, the location of a strategic Chinese Navy base which reportedly houses ballistic missile submarines.
Beijing said at the time that the unarmed ship, the USNS Impeccable, was carrying out “illegal surveying” in its EEZ, violating Chinese and international laws.
The U.S. Navy says the Impeccable is designed to detect quiet foreign diesel and nuclear-powered submarines and to map the seabed for future antisubmarine warfare purposes.
It tows two sonar systems, one emitting a low frequency pulse and a second “listening” to returning echoes. The equipment is used “to gather ocean acoustical data for antisubmarine warfare and rapidly transmit the information to the Navy for prompt analysis,” according to the Military Sealift Command.
During the incident in March, crewmembers of one of the Chinese vessels confronting the Impeccable used a grappling hook to try to snag the towed system.
U.S. Pacific Command head Navy Adm. Timothy Keating told a Senate committee hearing later that month that the confrontation was “a troubling indicator that China, particularly in the South China Sea, is behaving in an aggressive, troublesome manner and [is] not willing to abide by acceptable standards of behavior or ‘rules of the road,’”
The most serious incident of its type to have occurred in the region took place in April 2001, when a U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided in mid air with one of two Chinese jets that had been scrambled to track it. The Chinese pilot was killed and the American aircraft was made an emergency landing at a military airfield on Hainan island.
China held the 24-person crew for 11 days before they were allowed to return home. The plane was airlifted back to the U.S. later that year.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53199