The collision between Chinese and U.S. military aircraft occurred on April 1, 2001, when a U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft was on a reconnaissance mission over the South China Sea and was returning to its base in Okinawa, Japan, when the Chinese Communist Party sent two J-8II fighter jets that flew dangerously close at high speed and then crashed into the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft.
The Chinese J-8 fighter crashed and the pilot, Wang Wei, parachuted out and was later officially declared dead. The U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft was forced to land at Lingshui Airport on Hainan Island, and the crew was detained there for 11 days.
It was more than three months before the Chinese government allowed the U.S. plane to be dismantled and loaded onto a large Russian transport plane for transport back to the United States.
The EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft was capable of intercepting telephone and radio communications and monitoring radar, infrared and other weapons tracking systems. At the time, the United States had 11 EP-3 spy planes.
Wang Wei loves to show off his skills and has the audacity to do so
On April 1, Free Asia reported that months before the collision between the U.S. and Chinese planes, the U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance fleet was impressed that the pilot, Wang Wei, flying J-8 No. 81192, was flying dangerously in defiance of international codes, and that the U.S. had lodged a formal protest in late 2000.
The U.S. Navy pilot’s conversations in the video archives documenting the U.S. military show that the accident occurred when the No. 81192 J-8, flying dangerously close at high speed, was only 20 feet away from the EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft …… when it appeared to be out of control due to a stall.
The report said, twenty years on, then U.S. Department of Defense official in charge of China and Taiwan affairs Mark Stokes (Mark Stokes) still clearly remember his reaction when he was notified of the collision accident, “My first reaction at that time was, is it Wang Wei? Sure enough, it was him, and he ended up playing it safe across the border.”
Shi Mingkai, who retired from the Air Force, was stationed in Beijing in the 1990s as an assistant military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
Shi explained that U.S. pilots on missions in the South China Sea and those in charge of the Pentagon office had long been aware of Wang Wei, who flew in such a provocative manner that some called him a “hot dog” and a show-off. In U.S. military culture, the term “hot dog” is often used to describe an adversary who loves to show off his skills and has the audacity to do so.
China manipulated information to blame the U.S. for the crash
Shi Mingkai stressed that the U.S. military was flying in international airspace in the South China Sea when the crash occurred 20 years ago, but he would not place all the blame on Wang Wei alone. The key is who gave him the orders from the fighter’s ground control team? How much did he follow orders to be controlled? And how did the Chinese Communist military’s chain of command work? At the time, the U.S. side did not know.
If the U.S. learned anything from that accident, Shi Mingkai said, it was that the way the CCP manipulates information is related to domestic politics. In the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist military, there was deliberate and purposeful manipulation of information at the time, saying that it was all the fault of the U.S. that the U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane deliberately hit the J-8.
And the principles that the U.S. held firm at the time were interpreted by the CCP-controlled domestic media and mouthpieces as the U.S. intentionally apologizing and admitting its fault.
Both President George W. Bush Jr. and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had been in office for less than 100 days, expressed “regret” for the loss of Wang Wei’s life and that of his family.
In an interview, Powell emphasized that expressing regret does not mean the United States did anything wrong. Shane Osborne, the captain of the EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft, also stated firmly at a press conference, “We did the right thing, and there’s no need to apologize on our side.”
In the South China Sea, historical scenes replayed?
Twenty years on, a similar historical scenario has resurfaced, with the new Biden administration taking office and the U.S. mission to enforce freedom of navigation in the South China Sea not easing up in the face of more aggressive, comprehensive and multifaceted moves by the Chinese Communist Party, the report said.
According to data provided by the Pentagon, the Biden administration has carried out two freedom of navigation missions (FON) in the South China Sea in the past two months since taking office, and the U.S. military has carried out freedom of navigation missions in the South China Sea as many as 30 times in the four years of former President Trump’s administration.
Gregory Poling, director of the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, said that in the 20 years since the U.S.-China South China Sea collision, both the U.S. and China are well aware of the danger of escalating into a military conflict, and that a deliberate ramming of warships or ramming of military aircraft should A deliberate warship ramming or military aircraft collision should be unlikely to happen.
According to Pollin, an accident involving a mainland Chinese maritime militia vessel could lead to an escalation of the situation.
Earlier this year, the Chinese Communist Party once again took the stance of “building islands and reefs for Beijing” in the South China Sea, pushing directly into the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) waters on the Philippines’ doorstep. More recently, more than 200 fishing boats carrying mainland Chinese militiamen have continued to gather at the sovereignty-disputed Niuyu Reef in the Spratly Islands. The Chinese Communist Party claims to be “temporarily hiding from the storm.”
Expert: Chinese Communist Party tries to whale away the South China Sea by bullying the small with the big
The Chinese Communist Party is determined to “bully the small with the big” and to control the waters and airspace of the South China Sea by virtue of “numerical superiority,” said Pollin, adding that all sovereign claimants to the South China Sea should be concerned. It could send more militia fishing boats or dozens of Chinese maritime police vessels to intimidate countries in the South China Sea for oil and gas exploration.
If the competition in the South China Sea turns out to be a crowded one, that would be bad news for Southeast Asian countries, as well as for U.S. regional allies, Pollin said.
Ngau Yoke Reef is located in the waters of the Spratly Islands and west of Palawan Island in the Philippines, and includes China, the Philippines and Vietnam all claiming sovereignty over it. Why don’t mainland Chinese fishermen go to the shelters that China has built on the islands in the South China Sea, and why do they choose to hide from the elements in the Philippines’ exclusive economic waters?
The Philippines, in addition to sending warplanes to fly over the ship build-up every day, has demanded that the Chinese Communist Party immediately and fully evacuate the illegally assembled ships.
The White House issued a press release on the evening of March 31, the White House national security adviser Sullivan (Jake Sullivan) has been with the Philippines national security adviser Esperon (Hermogenes Esperon) on the phone, reiterating that the “U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty” applies to the South China Sea, the United States and the Philippines will work closely together to address challenges in the South China Sea.
Experts: China’s Communist Party is making waves, from the South China Sea to the Indo-Pacific
Huang Zongding, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Chinese Communist Politics and Military and Operational Concepts of the National Defense Security Research Institute, a Taiwan-based consortium, told Radio Free Asia that the entire regional security situation this year is also a source of concern for the military layout of the Chinese Communist Party, and Myanmar is an uncertainty.
He said there are three levels of the CCP’s military layout in Southeast Asia: one is the security of the border areas on land; the second is the investment of force in the South China Sea; and the third is the Belt and Road. For the CCP, in terms of general direction, it is the first and third layers related to Myanmar …… The situation in Myanmar concerns the construction of the CCP’s military base in Kyaukpyu port.
He reminded that the military base is responsible for monitoring India’s Andaman port, which is also relevant to the overall Indo-Pacific security picture. If the situation in the region and neighboring countries is unstable, it is not in the CCP’s interest to consider what kind of regional environment it wants, from Burma to the South China Sea.
Shi Mingkai believes that the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait are possible trigger points for accidents and gunfire between the U.S. and China. If the accident is caused by some kind of miscalculation, tensions will rise and problems will arise, but if it happens in Taiwan, the consequences may be even greater.
In Shi Mingkai’s view, “Under the existing constitutional structure of the Republic of China, Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country with two legitimate governments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and this is the status quo, and it is Beijing that wants to change this status quo.”
Pollin argued that the U.S. needs to take a more comprehensive macro view of the military threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, from the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea and even the border conflict with India, and if it only sees these points and phenomena it will put the wrong focus.
He said the U.S. needs to have a longer-term strategic preparation, and with diplomatic and economic pressure to convince Beijing, the U.S. and China need to establish a hotline mechanism or agreement that can reduce tensions, once in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea to repeat the accidental scenario in 2001, when Xi Jinping personally commanded the deployment, it is too late.
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