China Warplanes Patrol New ADIZ! Japan 'Prime Target' If It Intrudes!
- China warplanes patrol new ADIZ!
by The Washington Post, AFP-JIJI, via http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
State media: Japan ‘prime target’ if it intrudes
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BEIJING/SEOUL – China said Thursday it had sent warplanes to patrol its newly declared maritime air defense identification zone as a dispute over an island chain racheted up into a dangerous regional standoff.
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The move came after Japan and South Korea announced the same day that they had sent surveillance aircraft of their own into the area over the East China Sea. The United States has joined many of China’s neighbors in condemning its decision Saturday to establish the zone and defied Beijing by flying two B-52 bombers through the area Tuesday.
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A Chinese Air Force spokesman, Col. Shen Jinke, said several fighter jets and an early warning aircraft had been sent on “defensive” air patrols in the ADIZ to “strengthen the monitoring of aerial targets,” following an earlier patrol shortly after the zone was announced, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
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On Friday, Chinese state-run media identified Japan as the “prime target” in the ADIZ, calling for “timely countermeasures without hesitation” if Tokyo defies it. But other countries that have sent military aircraft into the zone, including the United States and South Korea, should be largely ignored, the Global Times said in an editorial headlined “Japan prime target of ADIZ tussle.”
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“We should carry out timely countermeasures without hesitation against Japan when it challenges China’s newly declared ADIZ,” the paper, which is close to the ruling Communist Party, said. “If the U.S. does not go too far, we will not target it in safeguarding our air defense zone. . . . What we should do at present is firmly counter provocative actions from Japan.”
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In announcing the zone’s establishment, China had warned that any noncommercial aircraft entering it without notice could face “defensive emergency measures.” Concern immediately surfaced because it overlapped similar zones operated by Japan and South Korea, encompassing islands controlled by those countries but claimed by China.
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But in a sign of the mixed signals emanating from Beijing this week, a Defense Ministry spokesman said in response to a question that it was “incorrect” to say that countries had the right to shoot down unidentified planes entering air defense identification zones.
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Such zones were neither “no-fly zones” nor territorial airspace, Col. Yang Yujun told a news conference, but were simply meant to give nations time to react to possible threats.
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Experts say China’s decision to unilaterally establish the zone inflamed an already tense situation and raised the possibility of military conflict, including over the Japan-held Senkaku Islands. The latest flights intensify the game of dare being played above Asia’s contested maritime territory.
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