BEIJING: China’s military on Thursday told the United States to end air and naval surveillance near its borders, saying it was damaging relations between the Pacific powers and could lead to “undesirable accidents”.

The US should “take concrete measures to decrease close-in reconnaissance activities against China towards a complete stop”, defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said at a monthly briefing.

Yang’s comments came with Beijing and Washington at odds over an incident last week in the skies 220 kilometres off China’s Hainan island.

The US said that an armed Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US military aircraft, while China countered in a ministry statement carried on state media that the allegations were “totally groundless”.

“The location of the incident is 220 kilometres from China’s Hainan island,” Yang said on Thursday. “It is not 220kms from Hawaii in the United States and certainly not 220kms from Florida. So the rights and wrongs of this case are very clear.

“The encounter has raised comparisons to an incident in April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US Navy EP-3 spy plane around 110kms off Hainan.

One Chinese pilot died and the US plane had to make an emergency landing on Hainan where China detained the 24-member crew for more than a week until Beijing and Washington cut a deal for their release.

In the ensuing years China’s military spending and capabilities have increased while the US military, long a presence in the region, has strengthened its defence alliance with Tokyo, which is at odds with Beijing over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Yang said US ships and aircraft had long been engaged in “frequent, wide-range, close-in reconnaissance activities against China”.

Such missions “not only damage China’s security interests but also damage strategic trust and the bilateral relationship between China and the United States”.

They could also “possibly lead to undesirable accidents”, he said.

The two militaries have been stepping up exchanges and visits in an effort to build trust and try to work out guidelines to avoid miscalculations as they increasingly encounter each other at air and sea.

ACT OF HOSTILITY: Regarding just such a scheduled meeting under way this week in Washington, Yang offered no details, citing the ongoing nature of the talks.

China’s Global Times newspaper, which is linked to the ruling Communist Party, on Monday warned that Beijing could treat US surveillance flights as an “act of hostility”.

On Thursday it said that if the US does not end them, China could carry out similar activities near US territory. Such an “option has become increasingly possible as China’s military technologies are advancing”, it said in an editorial. Yang, when asked directly about such a possibility, gave an ambiguous answer.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2014