China will not back down, said Wang Xiangwei in the South China Morning Post. The U.S. and Japan are squawking about the country’s recent declaration of an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea, requiring any foreign aircraft entering the space to identify itself to Chinese authorities or risk military action. They take umbrage at the reach of the zone, which includes the Diaoyu Islands, Chinese territory that Japan claims and calls the Senkaku. But their complaints will not sway Beijing. The air defense declaration is part of President Xi Jinping’s “new and more assertive diplomatic initiatives” that are intended “to counter the U.S.’s policy of aligning with Asia” as well as “Japan’s increasingly aggressive stance over the sovereignty of the islands.”
China is playing a long game, said Xie Chao in the Global Times (China). It has every right to declare an air zone, just as every other major power in the region has done. For decades now, China has been surrounded by a chain of foreign air defense ID zones “enforced by the U.S. and its allies.” Whenever our planes patrol the Diaoyu Islands, we are “deluged by Japanese reports” of fighter planes scrambled in response. In the short term, setting up our own zone will enable us to do the same to Japan when Japanese patrols fly over the disputed islands. That’s only fair. Longer term, though, the point of creating this new zone is to start “dealing with the U.S. using its own methods.” This isn’t really about the islands, it’s about prestige. China intends to be a great power, and it has to start acting like one. “If others can do this to China, China can do this to others.”
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