China warns US over spy planes

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China warns US over spy planes

07/28/2011

China has warned the United States that it will "seriously harm" the relationship between the two countries if it continues to fly its spy planes close to the Chinese coast.

The warning comes after it was reported this week that two Chinese Sukhoi-27 fighters had chased a US U-2 reconnaissance jet and had briefly strayed into Taiwanese airspace.

Taiwan confirmed it had dispatched two F-16 fighters to intercept the Chinese jets, which quickly backtracked.

"We demand that the United States respects China's sovereignty and security interests and takes concrete measures to boost a healthy and stable development of military relations," said a spokesman for the Chinese Defence ministry to the Global Times, a state-run newspaper.

The defence ministry called on the US to halt the flights, calling them a "major obstacle" to good relations and saying that they had "severely harmed" mutual trust.

The US seems unlikely to bow to the demands. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, insisted in the wake of the latest incident that the US would continue to fly operations in international airspace.

"The Chinese would see us move out of there," he said. "We're not going to do that, from my perspective. These reconnaissance flights are important." China has long objected to the US monitoring of its coastline, especially after a US spy plane and People's Liberation Army jet collided in 2001 near Hainan island, killing a Chinese pilot. In a major diplomatic row, the crew of the US plane was detained for 11 days.

Military ties between the US and China have been rocky and continue to be strained by US arms sales to Taiwan. A decision on whether to sell the island 66 new F-16 jets is due by the beginning of October.

The US has said it wants greater military transparency from China over its military modernisation, and has warned about China's growing missile and cyber capabilities.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...py-planes.html