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The U.S.-Japan Security Alliance and the PRC
The Abandonment-Entrapment Dynamic, the Balance of Threat and National Identity in the Trilateral Relationship
Vincent A. Pace
Enosinian Honors Senior Thesis Program
Elliott School of International Affairs
George Washington University
May 3, 2003
4. The EP-3E Incident
On the morning of April 1st, 2001, a US Navy EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane with a crew of 24 left Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, for a surveillance mission on a PRC Russian-built Sovremenny-class destroyer along the southern coast of the PRC. Prior to its final emergency landing, the EP-3E did not enter the internationally recognized 12-mile span of coast waters on the PRC's perimeter, even though it was within the zone unilaterally declared by the PRC which supposed to extend its sovereign rights into waters far beyond the 12-mile norm.
The PRC responded by scrambling two F-8 fighter-bombers to monitor the reconnaissance plane, which was circling near the destroyer. During the interception, the EP-3E and one of the two jets collided, causing significant damage to both aircraft. The F-8 broke apart and plummeted to the ocean below in flames. Wang Wei, the pilot of the stricken plane radioed to Zhao Yu, the pilot of the other, that he would bail and proceeded to do so. Wang landed in the sea below and was never seen again, despite intensive PRC search efforts over the following days.
The EP-3E's damage was also severe, and it plummeted hundreds of meters before the crew managed to regain control of the aircraft. According to Taiwanese defense sources that electronically monitored the entire incident, the EP-3E crew tried to fly the plane to make an emergency landing on friendly territory. This, however, was aborted when Zhao, after being denied permission to shoot the EP-3E down, fired warning shots in close proximity to the plane in order to force it down on PRC territory.60 The EP-3E issued a distress call, to which aviation authorities on Hainan did not respond, and made its emergency landing at the Lingshui Airport on Hainan Island off of the southern coast of the PRC.
As soon as it became clear that the EP-3E would land in the PRC, the crew began destroying the sensitive data and equipment inside and it later revealed to the media that it had gone through the entire list. Once on the ground, PRC forces demanded that the crew leave the plane, which the crew at first resisted, demanding to remain on board until US diplomats could arrive. The PRC forced its way onto the plane by wrestling to the ground the EP-3E crewmember that was attempting to hold the door. They took the crew into custody and had unfettered access to the plane from that point.
This collision was the culmination of several months of ratcheting tensions in the cat and mouse game between US spy planes and the PRC fighters sent to intercept them along the PRC's southern coast. About a month before the EP-3E incident, two US spy planes monitoring PLA naval exercises in the Yellow Sea were intercepted by four F-7 MiG fighters. The following day, the US again sent out two spy planes, but this time they were accompanied by four F-15 fighters. The PRC then again elected to intercept with two F-7 MiG fighters but this time accompanied by two additional SU-27 fighters.61 Moreover, the US was able to produce a variety of videos and photographs showing a pattern of PRC interceptors flying dangerously close to US aircraft in order to intimidate US pilots. One video even showed Wang himself displaying his email on a piece of paper from his jet's cockpit to the US crew.
With the plane and crew in PRC control, the two sides began to seek a resolution to the issue. Before the PRC Foreign Ministry could even confirm the incident, the US publicly demanded that both the crew and the plane be returned immediately to the US, laying the blame with the PRC. President Bush initially sought to handle this issue at a level lower than the president so as to minimize its seriousness, but on April 2 he entered the fray and called for "the prompt and safe return of the crew and the return of the aircraft without further damaging or tampering."62 The PRC, predictably, rejected this and blamed the US, demanding an apology from the US for the incident. Jiang Zemin himself began demanding on a nearly daily basis that the US apologize. The apology initially sought by the PRC was supposed to include all aspects of the situation, including the reconnaissance off of the PRC coast. The PRC's official news agency Xinhua listed PRC demands as follows: "The US government must apologize to the Chinese government and people, stop immediately all its reconnaissance activities along the coastal areas of China, actively cooperate with the Chinese government to conduct a comprehensive and thorough investigation of this incident, and compensate in a rapid, complete, and effective manner for the personnel and property losses on the part of the Chinese side."63
With the demands of each side set, the diplomatic haggling began. The Bush administration initially rejected outright any apology, but in seeking to avoid an outcome like the 1960 U-2 incident, this position gradually ameliorated.64 On April 4, Secretary of State Colin Powel expressed "regret" over the fate of Wang, which Beijing welcomed as "a step in the right direction."65 As late as April 8, Vice President Dick Cheney said that the US had no intention whatsoever of apologizing to the PRC, but just three days later on April 11 US Ambassador to the PRC Joseph Prueher handed a letter to the PRC Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong saying that the US was "very sorry" for the loss of the PRC pilot and also that it was "very sorry" that the EP-3E had landed in Hainan without permission.66 This diplomatically nuanced statement was one that was palatable to the Bush administration in English - it accepted no blame nor offered an apology - and could be translated as baoqian, the Chinese word for apology that connotes the fault of the speaker, thus satisfying the PRC demand for an apology on the part of the US. The crew was released the following day, with no PRC lack of emphasis on the US baoqian.
The PRC treated the crew relatively well, resisting any number of strong domestic voices calling for harsher action.67 They were housed in a military guesthouse, rather than any number of less hospitable possibilities. On April 2, US diplomats arrived in Hainan and demanded to see the crew but were unable to for nearly 72 hours, when they were permitted to speak only briefly to the crew. The meetings continued throughout the detention of the crew and became slightly more substantive than the first meeting. The PRC engaged in sometimes-controversial interrogation methods, including sleep deprivation and disorienting schedules, knowing fully well that these are also in the US' bag of tricks and would elicit little reaction from the US. The only unwanted physical contact that came to light during the crew's detention was the skirmish to board the plane, mentioned above.
With the negotiations that were going on, the two sides waged a fierce PR war, each trying to lay the blame on the other. The pointedness of this rhetorical conflict peaked and was toned down as the sides negotiated for their priority demands. The US cited the norm of international aviation law that a faster aircraft is responsible for avoiding a slower one and the increasingly aggressive intercepts along the southern coast of the PRC. The PRC countered that the US plane veered suddenly in the direction of the lost jet, implying that this flight pattern negated any relevant aviation norms. The US cited "commonly accepted principles of international law" to justify the emergency landing in Hainan.68 The PRC countered that the plane violated PRC sovereignty by landing without permission, despite being forced down by the PRC pilot and the emergency situation. Early on, one US official even countered the PRC demand for an apology with a counter-demand that the PRC apologize for endangering the lives of the 24 crewmembers. Each side released a computer animation depicting their version of events.
Once the US apology led to the release of the crew, the negotiations moved onto the other demands of each side. For the US, the remaining issue was to get the EP-3E returned as quickly as possible. While the crew was released in a comparatively short period of 11 days, the aircraft languished in Hainan for more than three months; the final pieces did not leave Hainan until July 3.69 The PRC was clearly willing to let negotiations for the return of the plane to drag out over months, giving its technicians ample time to examine the contents of the plane. Despite the technical feasibility of being able to repair the EP-3E and fly it out back to the US, the PRC forced Washington to agree to remove the EP-3E in pieces and transport it back to the US. The PRC also rejected a US proposal to remove the plane on a US-made C-5 transport plane, and instead coerced the US to use a Russian-made Antonov 124 cargo plane, which had to be leased from a Russian company.
The remaining PRC demands were widdled down to just one. The PRC undoubtedly realized that the US would not end its reconnaissance missions along the coast and that fell from the negotiations. Their demand for cooperation in an investigation also became moot when each presented an extremely different account of what happened, both "based on evidence." This left the PRC with their demand for compensation, an issue that became one of haggling over numbers. The PRC produced an itemized list of expenses demanding $1 million, which US officials dismissed as "exaggerated."70 The US countered with an offer to pay $34,567, a number some in the PRC suggested was selected arbitrarily by the US to humiliate the PRC. Negotiations for this wrangled on throughout the summer but fell off the map after September 11.
The rhetorical back-and-forth also continued throughout these negotiations, but the overall trend was on the downward. Once the US secured the release of the crew, they turned the rhetorical heat up. The US provided evidence of PRC "unsafe intercepts" by PLA aircraft along the southern coast of the PRC in the form of a number of videos and photos. This was the final upward spike in the intensity of the PR war. From that point, the rhetorical conflict on this issue gradually petered out as the two sides moved to resuscitate the bilateral relationship even before September 11 cleared the EP-3 incident right off the board.
The captive domestic audience of the PRC was also privy to the PR campaign on the part of their government. Although initially the media was briefly low-key about the issue, a few days into the incident the media began to whip up nationalist support for the government against the US. This created a situation in which the government created pressure on itself and then was able to back its demand for an apology with a need to placate its citizens.
In contrast to the Taiwan Strait crisis, the US military reaction was subdued. In a subtle military threat, the US ordered some warships that were scheduled to transit through the South China Sea to slow down and remain in the area for a longer period of time. A defense official declined to characterize the move as a "show of force," and instead said: "Their presence is a constant signal of US interest."71 In the end, however, the ships eventually left the area as negotiations pressed on and never made a big splash in the course of events.
Japan, itself often the target of PRC reconnaissance planes, this time allowed no doubts about its position of support for the US.72 On April 3, Japanese Ambassador to the United States Shunji Yanai stated that Japan supported the US position and noted specifically many of the points of that position. He backed the US demand for an early return of the plane and its crew to the US and the US demand that the PRC not board the plane. He dismissed the PRC allegation that the plane had illegally entered PRC airspace in landing on Hainan. Japan's Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs delivered the same message to the PRC in a phone call. Japan's SDF chief Toshitsugu Saito reiterated much of the same message. Interestingly, Saito also unrealistically suggested that Japan could investigate the crash since the US and the PRC could not agree, implying a balanced mediation.
Rhetorically, Japan wasted no effort in emphasizing their hope for an amicable solution to this issue. Yanai called for such a solution so as to prevent a major diplomatic rift between the US and the PRC. Saito also said much the same thing, stating, "Friendly relations between the United States and China are indispensable for peace and stability in Asia and the Pacific region."73 Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono was quoted as saying to US Secretary of State Colin Powell that "it is extremely important that good US-China relations continue."
At the core of this incident again is the Taiwan issue. US reconnaissance activities around the perimeter of the PRC are largely in support of the de facto protectorate the US has over Taiwan. Any enhancement of the US ability to protect Taiwan directly conflicts with the PRC's primary foreign policy and military goal of unification with Taiwan. The PRC is well aware that US reconnaissance has kept the US up to date on the development of many PRC military capabilities - including the vast missile deployment across from Taiwan - which tend to lead to more robust arm sales packages to Taiwan and thus neutralize some of the gains that the PRC makes vis-à-vis Taiwan.
The rising tensions in the South China Sea prior to April 1, 2001, were due in significant part to US domestic politics. When Bush entered office, the PRC was re-classified as a "strategic competitor" in line with neo-conservatism and tensions between the US and the PRC rose. The newest ism to enter the White House led to an increase in the amount of surveillance being conducted along the PRC's coast. It was this augmentation that coincided with increasing PRC aggressiveness in its intercepts and it is very likely a causal relationship. The rather ridiculous assertion that the EP-3E was able to "ram" an F-8 aside, this aggressiveness combined with a miscalculation on the part of Wang Wei is what ultimately caused the actual collision.
The most inflammatory act on the part of the PRC in the course of this incident was the warning shots fired by Zhao Yu. It is unclear whether these were authorized by higher authorities or by an independent act on the part of Zhao himself. But it is important to note that the PRC was adamant in its refusal of Zhao's request to shoot down the EP-3E, an act that would have been an extreme escalation of the situation.
The PRC treatment of the crew showed careful restraint. Calls, admittedly extreme, for a much harsher treatment of the crew were ignored. A cost-benefit analysis can easily explain this; the treatment of the US crew was undoubtedly an explosive issue in the PRC-US relationship and the potential damage could have been huge. At the same time, there would have been a strong public support for much harsher actions against the US. The PRC leadership chose to sacrifice the public opinion benefit they might have gained to avoid the guaranteed damage to the PRC-US relationship such actions would have caused.
The PRC once again used this incident to stoke up domestic nationalism, an issue which touches on the core problem of the PRC: diminishing legitimacy. To bolster this legitimacy, the CCP seeks to define its identity through a form of virulent nationalism. The PRC almost always does this when there is some kind of conflict with either the US or Japan. Yet by stoking nationalistic outrage, the PRC hamstrings their own flexibility in diplomatic crises. Because the PRC government makes domestic public opinion swerve in one direction and thereby affect how decisions can be made, they become limited in their policy options due to the need to maintain at least some level of domestic support in order to limit opposition to the regime and enhance their legitimacy. This tends to make the PRC aggressive, inflexible, and extremely sensitive to losses of face.
The PRC's handling of this incident clearly showed the power of their concept of gaining or losing face. Their foremost diplomatic goal in this issue was, simply, a statement from the US. Peter Hays Gries and Kaiping Peng argue that, rather than the collision itself, it was the US' refusal to apologize properly that really angered Beijing.75 In returning the plane, they subtly moved to gain face by humiliating the US in making them dismantle the EP-3E instead of repair it and then forcing them to use a non-US cargo plane to transport it back. They then accused the $34,567 US offer of compensation of being a way to humiliate the PRC, which seems likely despite any evidence that it actually was.
The concept of face encourages the PRC to be both practical and petty at the same time. The PRC needed to gain something from this. They knew that there was little they could gain from the US and they did not wish to expend the political capital to do so. Thus, they pursued what they realistically and rightly believed they could get from the US: a suitable apology. On the other side, they raised a seemingly logistical issue - what kind of plane would transport the EP-3E out of Hainan - to an importance that allowed them to gain face by humiliating the US.
The PRC's acceptance of Bush's apology as what was needed to release the crew certainly demonstrated the value that the PRC places on the PRC-US relationship. It managed to strike a balance between that relationship and the demands of the extremely nationalistic domestic audience and the conservatives in the leadership. This was despite speculation from US pundits who asserted that the PRC would use the crew as a bargaining chip in the upcoming US arm sales to Taiwan when in fact the PRC showed considerable restraint in its handling of the troops.
The PRC clearly did not feel the same restraint in its actions toward the plane as it had with the crew. The PRC was content to let negotiations drag out over months, giving its technicians more than enough time to examine the plane's equipment. Even though the released US crew claimed that it had destroyed all the "good stuff," the PRC undoubtedly plucked and picked at the US plane until completely satisfied that they could glean no more information from it.76 Some even claimed that it could be "the most significant seizure of an adversary's intelligence equipment since Britain seized a key to the "Enigma" code aboard a German submarine in World War II."77 And despite US protests and arguments of international law that military craft are "sovereign territory," the PRC was actually doing the same thing the US had done when a Soviet pilot with intentions to defect landed the newest Soviet "Foxbat" fighter plane at a Japanese air base in Hokkaido on September 6, 1976; the US and Japan dissected the plane and studied it, only to return it later - in pieces.78
The US administration's initial behavior was the sum of a Republican administration influenced by and playing to a neoconservative base while at the same time needing to pragmatically consider the lives of the endangered troops. Initial rhetoric attacking the PRC was clearly in the neoconservative line but as the Bush administration realized that they would have to bend in order to get the US crew members back safely, they did so. With the crewmembers home safe, they moved back to the strong rhetoric, knowing full well there was little they could do to hasten the return of the EP-3E until the PRC was satisfied that it had gotten all it could from the plane. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is well aware of the importance of the relationship with the PRC, especially for big business, another key GOP constituency. The administration moved to get the relationship back on track. As September 11 approached, PRC-US relations were decidedly on the upswing.
Japan, similar to its reaction to the Taiwan crisis, took on the position of falling in line behind the US while urging an amicable resolution to the crisis. The difference, however, was that the responses here was much stronger. While Japan may make some almost ludicrous attempts to play itself as a possible neutral arbiter between the US and the PRC, its solid support for the US position belies the threat Japan feels from the growing military power of the PRC and a belief that the PRC need to be watched. It is also possible that Japan rationalized that this conflict was unlikely to escalate, meaning the possibility of entrapment was low. At the same time, it provided a good chance to show that Japan is a "good ally" by siding unmistakably with the US.
Japan has no interest to see a more threatening conflict emerge between the PRC and the US. The downing of the EP-3E served as a stark reminder of the slowly rising challenge to US military eminence in the Pacific, a challenge last presented by imperial Japan. This is a threat that, even more than the US, Japanese is acutely aware of. Both politicians and the Japanese media in general portray increasing PRC military spending in a threatening light. Speaking of Asian nations such as Japan, Professor David Shambaugh stated, "None of them wants to be in a position where they have to make a choice between the US and Chinese."79 Japan's reaction to the situation sought to both encourage a peaceful resolution and shore up their qualities as an ally to the US.
As much if not more so than Japan, the PRC and the US sought to ameliorate the problem once the major negotiating issues were cleared. The dynamic in the bilateral relationship of economic interests bringing the two nations together even as security issues can pull them apart works like a rubber band, limiting the range of motion and pulling thing back when they get stretched out of comfortable proportions. After the EP-3E incident drove a wedge between the two nations, they both moved to get the relationship back on track. They even sought to avoid a repeat of the EP-3E incident; when the US and the PRC resumed military conflicts, one of their first orders of business was to work out rules of conduct for aerial interceptions. Through the entire course of events, the PRC especially took steps that were greatly less inflammatory than could have been.
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Table of Contents | 1. Introduction: Theory and Methodology | 2. The Taiwan Strait Crisis | 3. The Senkaku Islands Crisis | 4. The EP-3E Incident | 5. The War on Terrorism | 6. The PRC in the US-Japan Relationship
List of Acronyms | Bibliography
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