According to a report from the Wall Street Journal,China responded on Thursday to growing international defiance of its new air-defense zone in the East China Sea both by sending advanced fighter jets to the area and trying to play down any threat of military retaliation—underlining the confusion and escalated tension over the territorial dispute.
The announcement by China's air force that it had sent fighters and an early-warning aircraft to patrol the zone came just a few hours after Japan and South Korea, following the U.S.'s lead, said their military aircraft had flown into the zone without notifying Beijing over the past few days, and would continue to do so.
The U.S. challenged the zone's credibility on Tuesday by sending in two B-52 bombers without informing Chinese authorities, who had warned when they declared the zone on Saturday that such incursions would be met with unspecified "defensive emergency measures."
The conflicting signals from Beijing highlight the challenge the Chinese leadership faces as it tries to contain the international fallout from its surprise decision to establish the zone, without appearing weak in front of an increasingly nationalistic domestic audience.
China's apparent easing of its original warning suggests its fighters will monitor and escort rather than repel U.S., Japanese and South Korean aircraft that violate the rules of the zone, which covers islands claimed by Beijing and Tokyo, said Chinese and foreign analysts. The spat over the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea—known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China—has escalated over the past year.
To maintain its credibility internationally and domestically, China is likely to increase such escorts, a move that in such a tense political climate greatly increases the risk of an aerial incident that could spiral into a military clash, analysts and diplomats said.
Defense and international-relations analysts and Western and Asian diplomats said the Chinese government was still sending conflicting signals over how it intends to enforce the zone, which overlaps with similar ones established by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
China's ambiguity may be a deliberate attempt to make the U.S. and its allies wary of continuing military flights into the zone without observing its regulations, the analysts and diplomats said. But it could also stem from poor planning and a failure to consult other countries or experts, they said.
