<< A Chinese Navy J-11 fighter buzzes a US P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane off Hainan Island in August
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
WASHINGTON: A tag-team of Chinese reporters pressed the normally soft-spoken Chief of Naval Operations into making some fairly blunt statements on US-China relations this morning. It was an illuminating and unsettling clash of perspectives.
Adm. Jonathan Greenert devoted his opening remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to naval cooperation in the Pacific – especially with China – where he spent four days in July and met for the fourth time in 12 months with his Chinese counterpart, Adm. Wu Shengli. The CNO pointedly did not mention the August incident during which a PLA Navy fighter did a dangerous barrel roll over top of a US P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane, an unnerving echo of a 2001 incident in which a Chinese pilot buzzed a P-3 Orion so closely the planes collided and crashed.
The moment the floor opened to questions, however, a Chinese journalist took the mike and asked about the “encounter.” Had Greenert and Adm. Wu made any “progress [on] the issue of the US surveillance activities in international [air]space near by China?” the reporter asked in a thick accent. “Are you concerned that similar encounters will happen more frequently in the future?
“I am concerned that such unprofessional activity — and we have clear documentation that it was unprofessional — … would happen in the future,” Greenert replied. “One of our maritime patrol aircraft flying in international airspace, well over a 100-plus miles from the coast, was intercepted,” he said. There’s nothing wrong with such intercepts, he said, noting that the US and Russia did them all the time during the Cold War, but “there is a norm [for] operating safely” that the Chinese pilot in this incident ignored.
“It shouldn’t have happened, but it shouldn’t also define our relationship,” Greenert said, adding, “we will continue to operate in international airspace. We’ve made that clear and we will continue.”
Read the full story at BreakingDefense