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 Yet the move fits a pattern of putting teeth behind China's claims
and could potentially lead to dangerous encounters depending on how
vigorously China enforces it — and how cautious it is when
intercepting aircraft from Japan, the U.S. and other countries.
While enforcement is expected to start slowly, Beijing has a record
of playing the long game, and analysts say they anticipate a gradual
scaling-up of activity.
Beijing on Saturday issued a map of the zone — which includes a
cluster of islands controlled by Japan but also claimed by China —
and a set of rules that say all aircraft entering the area must
notify Chinese authorities and are subject to emergency military
measures if they do not identify themselves or obey Beijing's
orders.
The declaration seems to have flopped as a foreign policy gambit.
Analysts say Beijing may have miscalculated the forcefulness and
speed with which its neighbors rejected its demands.
Washington, which has hundreds of military aircraft based in the
region, says it has zero intention of complying. Japan likewise has
called the zone invalid, unenforceable and dangerous, while Taiwan
and South Korea, both close to the U.S., also rejected it.
At least in the short term, the move undermines Beijing's drive for
regional influence, said Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
"It doesn't serve Chinese interests to have tensions with so many
neighbors simultaneously," she said.
Denny Roy, a security expert at the East-West Center in Hawaii, said
China's enforcement will likely be mostly rhetorical at first.
"The Chinese can now start counting and reporting what they call
Japanese violations, while arguing that the Chinese side has shown
great restraint by not exercising what they will call China's right
to shoot, and arguing further that China cannot be so patient
indefinitely," Roy said.
China also faces practical difficulties deriving from gaps in its
air-to-air refueling and early warning and control capabilities,
presenting challenges in both detecting foreign aircraft and keeping
its planes in the air, according to Greg Waldron, Asia Managing
Editor at Flightglobal magazine in Singapore.
Despite that, Beijing has shown no sign of backing down, just as it
has continued to aggressively enforce its island claims in the South
China Sea over the strong protests from its neighbors.
Tensions remain high with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea
called Senkaku by Japan and Daioyu by China. Beijing was incensed by
Japan's September 2012 move to nationalize the chain, and Diaoyutai
by Taiwan, which also claims them.
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Since then, Chinese and Japanese coast guard ships have regularly
confronted each other in surrounding waters. Japan further angered
Beijing last month by threatening to shoot down unmanned Chinese
drones that Beijing says it plans to send on surveillance missions
over the islands.
Beijing's move was greeted rapturously by hardline Chinese
nationalists, underscoring Beijing's need to assuage the most vocal
facet of domestic public opinion. Strategically, it also serves to
keep the island controversy alive in service of Beijing's goal of
forcing Tokyo to accept that the islands are in dispute — a possible
first step to joint administration or unilateral Chinese control
over them.
Beijing was also responding in kind to Japan's strict enforcement of
its own air defense zone in the East China Sea, said Dennis Blasko,
an Asia analyst at think tank CNA's China Security Affairs Group and
a former Army attache in Beijing.
The Japanese zone, in place since the 1960s, overlaps extensively
with the newly announced Chinese zone. Japan, which keeps a public
record of all foreign incursions into its zone, actually extended it
westward by 22 kilometers (14 miles) in May.
Blasko and others say much still depends on China's plans for
implementation, but cite as a frightening precedent the 2001
collision between a U.S. surveillance plane and an overly-aggressive
Chinese fighter over the South China Sea that killed the Chinese
pilot and sparked a major diplomatic crisis.
June Teufel Dreyer, a China expert at the University of Miami, said
she would expect Beijing to pause until overseas criticisms die
down, then engineer a diplomatic incident by warning off Japanese
military aircraft without physically confronting them.
China further complicated matters by not consulting others on the
protocols it expects them to follow, or the rules of engagement for
Chinese pilots, said Ross Babbage, chair of Australia's Kokoda
Foundation, a security think tank.
"This is the kind of situation that clearly has the potential to
escalate," Babbage said.
[Associated
Press; CHRISTOPHER BODEEN]
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