China’s Ministry of National Defence accused Japan of airborne brinkmanship over the East China Sea, while completely rejecting Tokyo’s account of the latest near encounters between the military aircraft of both Japan and China.
Earlier the Japanese Defence Ministry had said that on Wednesday morning, Chinese fighter jets flew near to two Japanese propeller-driven reconnaissance air planes over the East China Sea, also specifying that the Chinese jets flew so close that the crew of one Japanese craft photographed what appeared to be missiles on the underside of the jets, the ministry said.
The official Chinese rejection of the Japanese version of events was predictable but it was marked as unusually hawkish or even much vehement wording from Beijing, that showed the bitterness built up between the two increasingly estranged neighbours .
The Chinese defence ministry spokesman, Senior Col. Geng Yansheng, said that in two incidents on Wednesday that Japanese military aircraft flew “abnormally close” to Chinese air force planes, incidentaly it was exactly the opposite of the account given by Japan’s Defence Ministry.
Colonel Geng said, in a statement released on the ministry’s website,“For some time, Japan has engaged in close-up tailing, monitoring and interfering with Chinese vessels and aircraft, risking the safety of the vessels and aircraft,” and further added,"Japan’s behaviour had “malign intentions and totally exposed its hypocrisy and two-facedness in relations with China.”
The Chinese Defence Ministry asserted that Japan was responsible for that and another dangerously close air encounter, when it said,"two Japanese F-15 jets had come as near as 30 meters, or about 100 feet, to a Chinese Tupolev Tu-154 medium-range patrol plane, “seriously affecting Chinese plane’s flying safety.”
China has accused that two Japanese reconnaissance planes had flown into China’s air defence "identification zone", prompting Chinese fighter jets to follow the planes at about 500 feet, while it is important to note that Japan does not agree the Chinese air identification zone since Beijing declared it late last year, and had always ignored it.
INDIA HONEST reminds that relations between Beijing and Tokyo had remained soured by disputes over Japan’s past invasion and occupation of China and other Asian countries, and that is part of much forgotten history of last century .
But the present territorial disputes in the East China Sea represent the most dangerous dimension of tensions in the East and South China sea,especially with the given risk of close encounters between the ships and planes going awry. INDIA HONEST asks a simple argument that both China and Japan's Defence officials cannot be true in the above case, then who is the liar ?.
Moreover IH, has been sniffing the events in the world in the past few months, when President Xi Jinping of China met Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a regional summit meeting in Shanghai, where it is reported that Mr.Xi has pursued a complicated,if not contradictory,course of assertiveness and conciliation.
While the disputes between China and Philippines over a group of islands in the South China Sea that both Philippines and China claim to control and China attempted aggressively to push oil Riggs in the disputed area within and close to Philippines economic zone, when the American officials were deeply worried that a collision or other event in the area could rapidly escalate tensions.
INDIA HONEST felt the behaviour of China had been same around with most of its neighbours including India, and that was visible when the visiting Chinese Foreign Minister called the issuance of staple visa to people of Arunachal and Jammu & Kashmir as a Chinese goodwill gesture, only to allow the people to visit China .
IH agrees that a patriotic Narendra Modi, who has been surprisingly expressed by the Chinese as an old friend, is definitely aware of the Chinese designs and also knew of the Chinese modus operendi of keeping open disputes and claims on others for decades and opening only on a particular time , while at the same time freezing those on certain occasions, only to use it as a tool to blackmail for economic gains.
We must not drive ourselves any extra length for any bilateral economic favour, while dumping the dubious Chinese motives. The economic necessity of increasing trade and commerce and investments is much deeper for the Chinese industries for those to survive in long run than what we need now to revive our economy.Growth in Indian economy will be much viable without China in the next five years, while Chinese are much more saturated and stagnant.
IH reminds that Arunachal and Jammu and Kashmir topics were created by the Chinese only as a tool to hide their own hegemony on India. IH asks proudly that why the resurgent India under the leadership of Narendra Modi cannot swap it with the disputed subject of Tibet's demand of autonomy and freedom .
Why we must support the Dalailama only from Dharmshala ? Why we should not to find a bigger goodwill gesture for the entire Tibet, which sadly the Congress government in past missed to do ?