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China said on Tuesday it would continue to push back against American intelligence-gathering operations near its borders and claimed territories after the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific said the Chinese military had scaled back its risky air intercepts in recent weeks.
"As a matter of principle, I would like to emphasis that China is firmly opposed to the frequent close-in reconnaissance conducted by U.S. warships and aircraft around China's airspace and waters," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing.
Last year, Washington began to publicly complain about a series of "unsafe and unprofessional" maneuvers by Chinese fighter pilots seeking to drive away U.S. and allied military aircraft in international airspace.
In mid-October, the Pentagon declassified two years of archive footage showing some of the close encounters that it said had occurred some 180 times since 2021 in the East and South China seas, where Beijing asserts long-standing territorial claims against U.S. defense treaty allies including Japan and the Philippines.
A week later, a U.S. Air Force B-52 strategic bomber reported a near miss after a People's Liberation Army J-11 jet came within 10 feet of the larger warplane during a risky night-time air intercept.
U.S. officials said the "coercive and risky operational behavior by the PLA" could lead to mishaps, or worse. They were told by their Chinese interlocutors to operate further from China's coast, Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's former policy chief, told an event in November 2022.
"We urge the U.S. to stop those dangerous activities, which threaten and undermine China's security and heighten the risk of regional conflict," said Wang, the spokesperson.
His comments came after Adm. John Aquilino, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) in Hawaii, said Chinese forces "seem to have stopped" their close intercepts following U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping's summit last month in San Francisco.
"I will tell you that I've had none of those since the meeting," Aquilino told reporters in Tokyo on Monday. "If that trend continues, that would be incredibly beneficial."
Restarting high-level communications with Beijing was one of Washington's top priorities when Biden reentered the White House almost three years ago. He has kept up annual talks with China's president, but the Pentagon believes more military-to-military dialogue is necessary to avoid misunderstandings.
Aquilino said his requests to speak with his counterparts in the PLA's theater commands have been rebuffed over the same period, including after the Biden-Xi summit.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also has yet to connect with China's military leadership, although officials from both sides held talks in November, according to the Financial Times.
The holdup largely relates to Beijing's failure to appoint a new defense minister following the unceremonious dismissal of Li Shangfu as part of a suspected corruption scandal and a wider purge.
Aquilino's revelation this week partly answers a debate among policymakers about whether aggressive Chinese pilots were acting on their own accord or on orders.
"Further evidence that PLA air and maritime close-proximity maneuvers aren't initiatives by overzealous commanders and operators on scene. These actions are encouraged, orchestrated and managed by the top [People's Republic of China] leadership hierarchy," Collin Koh, a researcher at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said in an X post on Wednesday.
Aquilino did not say whether the pause in dangerous intercepts also meant the PLA had stopped scrambling jets to monitor U.S. aircraft altogether.
INDOPACOM did not immediately respond to Newsweek's written request for comment.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more