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| Han class Submarine (Wiki info - Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Rory Medcalf
For years, China has criticized the surveillance activities of U.S. naval vessels in its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. Now China has begun, in however small a way, to do the same thing off Guam and Hawaii. And, somewhat counter-intuitively, this may prove to be in the interests of peace, stability and security right across Indo-Pacific Asia.
The revelation came on June 1, at the maritime security session of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s leading informal defense gathering.
It is common knowledge that China has long resented and pushed back against the presence of American surveillance ships and aircraft off its coast. China considers this bad for its national interest – after all, the Americans are presumably collecting data on Chinese military activities, among other things. China also presumably sees the ongoing presence as an insult to its national pride, a reminder of a history of humiliation by foreign powers.
Thus it was striking to hear a Chinese military officer reveal in an open discussion at this conference on Saturday that China had “thought of reciprocating” by “sending ships and planes to the US EEZ”. He then went further and announced that China had in fact done so “a few times”, although not on a daily basis (unlike the U.S. presence off China).
Read the full story at The Diplomat