Okay, there are few misconceptions you have which I feel the need to address.
China has been stepping up claims over the past few years that it owns the Japanese Senkaku islands, which the Chinese now call the Diaoyu islands. What China did here was claim the airspace above the Senkaku islands, but very subtly.
The Chinese aren't just "now" calling it the Diaoyu islands. They've always called it the Diaoyu islands. One can dispute whether the history of the Chinese claim to the islands which range back to the 12-13th century are still valid, but the fact is if you asked a Chinese a hundred years ago to point at a map and ask what those three rocks are, they will give you "Diaoyu Dao". China has recently "stepped up" its claims to the islands, yes.
However that was because of two moves in particular which no one seems to care about. Namely that is the 2010 arrest of a Chinese fisherman near the islands. Another is the far more provocative September 2012 Japanese government purchase of the islands. China had actually agreed to shelve the territorial dispute with Japan when they re-established relations some 40 years ago. But 2010's events basically spat in the face of that.
If you want a more detailed recent history of why this dispute is flaring, click
. The website is The Diplomat, and before anyone accuses it of being pro china, it is actually a western outlet.
For those who can't be bothered reading, basically China believes the Cairo Communique means the now disputed islands should have been handed back to them as a territory which Japan had invaded, but was unilaterally handed to Japan after the US occupation. China had decided to agree to not touch the matter of the dispute when they reestablished links with Japan and the rest of the world in the late 70s -- there was a sort of "gentleman's agreement," but this was effectively torn to shreds in 2010 and 2012.
The People's Liberation Army set up an Air Defense Identification Zone- basically a version of a no-fly zone, but one in which airlines are allowed to fly through if they provide prior notice. We don't know if that will hold true for military aircraft, and China threatened to take "defensive measures" if anybody- Japanese, Russian, American, Australian, etc.- decided to fly through it.
First, I want to point out that both
and the
already have had ADIZs for decades. China's ADIZ is actually very similar to the US in terms of principle. Neither renounce the use for "emergency measures" for instance. Of course, China's ADIZ is far smaller than either the US or Japan's.
So let's get into the gravy of things. A NFZ and an ADIZ are very different. An ADIZ doesn't restrict aircraft from flying through it. China has made it very explicit that civil international flights won't be affected. In other words, it will only be military aircraft that will be effected. Now what does this effect entail? Well they've given a list of instructions which are fairly in line with international norms. Basically they will intercept and tail military aircraft not so differently to how USAF F-15s and F-22s tail Russian Tu-95s when they near Alaska. The use of force is never restricted, not for the US ADIZ, not for the Japanese ADIZ, and for fun, here's the massive ADIZ for
.
A NFZ on the other hand, explicitly prohibits aircraft of various types and services (unidentified, civilian, military) from flying through it.
ADIZ merely seeks to identify and intercept unidentified military aircraft and monitor them.
For anyone interested,
is the FAA's instruction manual for US ADIZ procedure.
That, of course, was a very subtle trick. China didn't actually lay claim to the islands, but they forced anybody passing near them to acknowledge their new authority. If Japan didn't contest this, China would have new administrative power over the formerly Japanese territory. There's no doubt that this is almost certainly a deliberate act by the US to defy the zone and curb China from trying to claim more territory.
It depends. ADIZ's do not restrict military aircraft from flying in there. They are only there to give a nation forewarning of potential threats at a long distance. In China's case, it is also a good ancillary reason to bolster their claim to the disputed islands and erode Japan's administrative power. However, the presence of US B-52s isn't really a big deal, for a few reasons that I will emphasise on below.
The real question is going to be how China reacts. In Chinese culture, there is a great emphasis on "saving face", accounting for why so much nationalism is being kicked about right now. Once you go past a certain point, you've got to keep going or remain there to avoid embarrassment. If there is one thing that the Chinese are extremely sensitive to, it is the idea of being embarrassed. Flying B-52s through airspace claimed by you is pretty embarrassing, in my opinion- although to be fair, China probably didn't have much defense set up because they didn't own the airspace beforehand.
I'll just repeat, that the ADIZ doesn't actually prohibit military aircraft flying through it. While the Chinese do have a thing for saving face, in this case there really isn't any face to save. The point of an ADIZ is to identify potential threats. These are usually fast flying jets and bombers that are hard to ID. The B-52 has one of the largest RCS of any aircraft that is in US service, and the US have previously operated planes in the area before the Chinese ADIZ too. Not exactly a really threatening posture compared to how the US have operated before.
So I'll elaborate what the Chinese ADIZ actually means, for military flights.
1: It doesn't prohibit other nation's military aircraft from operating in the zone.
2: It does give the PLAAF/PLANAF an internationally recognized norm to intercept and identify potentially hostile aircraft (this is something all nations do).
3: And ultimately, if the aircraft is unresponsive, the PLAAF/PLANAF reserve the right to use emergency measures. This may mean forcing the plane to land or use of direct force. The chinese government's list of rules doesn't list the procedures of what entails a use of force. We can be sure the chinese pilots do have one however.
A little background -- the US have flown missions near Chinese airspace for years. US aircraft carrier battle groups have consistently exercised in the East China Sea. So the US have always had a military air presence in the area, it was just never reported because there was never an ADIZ. Now there is an ADIZ, and apparently people believe it means the US cannot do military flights in the zone. That is incorrect. The flights will simply be IDed by PLAAF AEWC, and some may be intercepted and tailed by fighters until the leave the zone. Again, standard practice which the US have been doing with the Russians for decades.
So, what does China's ADIZ mean for the disputed islands? Well this is one area which I think the Chinese have played a good hand.
The Japanese have publicly said that they would shoot down "foreign drones" that enter its airspace -- and by their definition, the airspace over Diaoyu/Senkaku is their airspace. The fact that the Chinese ADIZ includes the disputed islands by definition means PLAAF and PLANAF aircraft will fly over the zone.
Basically it gives an internationally recognized pretext to fly over a particular airspace. This leaves Abe in a situation where the airspace of the disputed islands is being directly challenged. If we want to talk semantics, if the JASDF doesn't shoot at Chinese military aircraft that fly over the disputed islands is a loss in itself, simply because the claim that they will shoot "foreign drones" over their airspace must also extend to "foreign military aircraft" too.
In any case, because China and Japan's ADIZ
, I'm sure we will see some interesting pictures of fighters of both sides taking pictures of one another.
If anyone is interested in why the US is in an uproar over this ADIZ, check this
article (the site has bad ads, but this write up is extremely erudite), and the author also expounded on some topics on a
.
Edit: Thanks kind stranger for the gold, and thanks everyone for responding, even those who disagree with what I wrote! I think cross pollination of each other's ideas and opinions is the best way to defuse tensions. Cheers
