By Zheng Wang
China’s ADIZ announcement may represent a bungled decision-making process.
China’s Air Defense Identification Zone announcement on November 23 drew immediate responses and strong criticism from all over the world. While a large amount of media reports and analysis articles have been produced since then, there are still several puzzling questions that have been overlooked or insufficiently addressed, especially regarding Beijing’s decision-making process. Among the questions: Was Beijing’s decision based on thorough research and careful planning? Was the policy research and planning leading to the ADIZ conducted chiefly by the PLA and or did other foreign policy institutes participate in this process? More importantly, did the top leadership have all of the details and accurate information, especially about the main differences between the Chinese version and the ADIZs of other countries, prior to the announcement? While many commentators on this issue generally have assumed that Beijing’s decision was based on the regime’s best calculations and reflected unified internal consensus, we don’t know whether it’s possible that this ADIZ decision was actually a policymaking failure.
The central distinction between China’s ADIZ and that of other countries, like the United States, is that China requires all planes that enter the ADIZ to notify China in advance, even if they do not plan to land at a Chinese airport. The ADIZs of the United States, for example, only require advanced notification of those planes planning to land. The US, through Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s statement, has made it clear that China’s demand for all planes to submit notification is an unacceptable requirement. A question to consider is whether China’s policy researchers were aware of this difference and reported it clearly and accurately to the top leadership. In another words, did Xi Jinping knew this difference clearly before the final announcement? Is it possible that his advisors only reported to him something like “each of our neighboring states has established their own ADIZ and there is nothing wrong with creating one by ourselves”?
Read the full story at The Diplomat