NYPress Hill of Beans

Christopher Caldwell

Cut Off

A friend of mine has been trying to convince me to do an article on the propaganda put out by the Chinese government during the spy-plane hostage crisis. He suggests as Exhibit A the Xinhua news wire from a couple of Thursdays back, entitled "Prayers Go Out for Missing Wang"–a headline I haven’t seen since Lorena Bobbitt was on the rampage. The story reported that the wife and child of missing pilot Wang Wei "have been praying."

Praying to whom, by the way? And praying for what? For a successful conclusion to the aerial search for Wang, of course, because, to quote the only thing any of his neighbors had to say about him, "Wang Wei is always ready to help others."

It was surprising to learn from Chinese sources the extent and duration of the search, which covered 300,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles), with 900 flights and 60,000 personnel; 3800 villagers were enlisted to search 190 kilometers of beach on Hainan. According to Xinhua, "Every village along the shoreline in Hainan has set up lookout posts, keeping vigilance round the clock."

To anyone who still believes the Chinese tale that the collision occurred in Chinese airspace, this bit of information ought to be mystifying. Because if the Chinese knew where Wang’s plane went down, their search would have to cover about one square mile. That alone is cause to wonder whether the whole search wasn’t a charade. It’s hard to imagine the Chinese government was keen to have Wang go to the Hague to explain to the World Court exactly what his orders were. And in that sense, it’s probably safe to say Washington was considerably more "sorry" about his loss than Peking was.

What’s more, since the aerial search went on for 11 days, which is about a week after there would have been the scantest hope of recovering the pilot, it’s worth asking what the Chinese were actually looking for. The answer, of course, is: top-secret materials that were dumped out of the U.S. spy plane as it made its way to Hainan island. The search more likely than not covered the plane’s flight path, and continues as you read this.

A couple of corners of the story were insufficiently reported even in the Western press. For one, there has never been a satisfactory explanation of why the American E3-PE landed at Hainan without a nose cone. The semi-official American explanation is that the Chinese fighter, flying up from behind, hit both engines on the American plane’s left wing, then broke in half and cartwheeled forward, shearing off the nose cone. But the nose cone as seen on the runway in Hainan didn’t look like it had been "sheared": it looked like it had been popped off clean. That part of the plane certainly contains sensitive radar technology. No one should bet against the possibility that it was detached as part of the information-ditching procedure as the plane descended.

The second underreported corner concerns the interrogation to which the crew was subjected. Shane Osborn, the pilot, told interviewers that "the only unpleasant part was the interrogation and the lack of sleep." Specifically, the Chinese woke the crews up in the middle of the night for long grilling sessions on how the plane worked, and tried to browbeat confessions out of them. So to call this crew hostages may not even go far enough. Back in Cold War times, sleep deprivation as an aid to interrogation used to get classified among the softcore variants of torture.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2001

Answers

Hmmm.. the plot thickens.. I,ve also been wondering why they seem to have just about universally referred to the plane as the "SPY" plane in the western press.. rather than the more neutral "surveillance".. Are we supposed to be shamed for our activities in "SPYING" on the Chinese?? Just thinking out loud..

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2001

Seems to me that our own press has been routinely calling that a spy plane as well. So where does that put us on this?

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

The media MUST refer to it as a spy plane, certainly where headlines are concerned. Surveillance is too long a word for either the printed or verbal news accounts. The same reason that during pre- rollover days, y2k was associated with either "fears" or "woes". Except that noone was afraid - they were either prepped or ignoring it altogether.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

Wasn't Wang Wei a guest character on a Gilligan's Island episode, or was that a Japanese guy...?

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

Maybe it's just me, but still strikes me as an incongruity, to have the WESTERN press refer to it as a SPY plane..Meanwhile, don't we have the treaty on open skies, so everyone else can overfly us?. LOL..Guess that's not spying or even surveillance, just "openness"

Meanwhile, an undeclared war goes on in South America under the guise of "Plan Columbia".. I've been interested that there has been condemnation of not following proper identification rules in the downing of the missionaries. But no mention i have seen of the propriety of shooting down planes in the first place.

cheers

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

As an outsider I have been watching with interest the unfolding events re the US Spy plane. Just a question, how would the US react if the Chinese ran regular spy plane flights along the US coast line. Not taking sides here just wondering if the US would send up fighters to intercept and intimidate the spy plane out of their space.

Regards from downunder

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

Greg, international law says a country's jurisdiction extends 12 miles offshore. (If there is less than 24 miles between countries (as in the English Channel), then the halfway point is the limit. China is using an arbitrary 50-mile limit. Far as I know, China doesn't have the technology to do what the US does with its electronic surveillance planes, but if it did and kept them outside the 12-mile zone, there would be no problem.

Russian submarines routinely prowl off the US coast for eavesdropping purposes but generally keep outside the 12-mile limit. Russian planes have had encounters with US pilots in various sensitive areas and, as I recall, have given a few aviators some interesting moments. But, generally, when Russian planes came too close the US jets buzzed them off and that was that; it was a bit of a game. But make no mistake--if the Chinese planes are outside the 12-mile limit and in international waters, there is nothing the US can or will do.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001