BEIJING — A U.S. Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea on Sunday and made an emergency landing in China. The Chinese government said the fighter crashed and its pilot was missing.
China quickly blamed the U.S. aircraft for the collision off the southern Chinese island of Hainan. But the commander of U.S. Pacific military forces said that the slower U.S. plane was more likely to have been hit by the nimble Chinese fighter. "It's pretty obvious who bumped who," said Adm. Dennis Blair in Hawaii.
The incident comes at an uneasy time in U.S.-Chinese relations. The Bush administration has taken a warier attitude toward Beijing, and the president is reportedly leaning toward selling Taiwan much of the high-tech weapons it seeks — a sale bitterly opposed by China.
The American EP-3 plane landed at a military airfield on Hainan. None of the 24 crew members was injured, said Col. John Bratton, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. The status of the crew and control of the plane on the ground were unclear.
Chinese officials assured the United States the crew is safe, and American diplomats were going to Hainan to see them, said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher. He said he had talked several times with Secretary of State Colin Powell. President Bush was briefed on the episode Sunday morning, an administration official said.
The U.S. plane was on a routine surveillance flight in international airspace when two Chinese fighters intercepted it, said Bratton. In Honolulu, U.S. Pacific Command officials showed a map that put the collision about 80 miles southeast of Hainan, well outside the 12-mile territorial sea and airspace.
China claims most of the South China Sea as its territorial waters — a claim rejected by countries that use the vast expanse of ocean for shipping.
"The U.S. side has total responsibility for this event," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that it had made a "serious" protest.
It said two Chinese fighters were sent up to track the plane as it approached Chinese airspace. "The U.S. plane abruptly diverted toward the Chinese planes, and its head and left wing collided with one of the Chinese planes, causing the Chinese plane to crash," it said. It put the accident about 62 miles southeast of Hainan. It said rescuers were searching for
the missing Chinese pilot.
But Blair blamed the Chinese fighters. He told reporters that the fighters, similar to an F-16, fly much faster and have more maneuverability than the EP3, which is about the size of a Boeing 737 and basically flies in a straight path.
The EP-3 is an unarmed four-engine propeller-driven plane equipped to listen in on radio signals and monitor radar sites.
The collision appeared to be an accident, and the Chinese did not force the plane down, Bratton said. The Pacific Command asked China to "facilitate the immediate return of the aircraft and crew," and Bratton said the Chinese appeared responsive to the U.S. requests.
Blair, speaking about 4 p.m. EST, said the Navy spoke to the crew about 18 hours earlier.
Prueher, the U.S. ambassador, said it appears "the Chinese have lost an aircraft, and we're sorry that occurred."
Distrust has risen between Beijing and Washington in recent weeks, exacerbated by China's recent detention of two scholars with links to the United States. China, in turn, has been protesting the prospect of the United States' selling new arms to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade Chinese province.
Nick Cook, an aviation expert with Jane's Defense Weekly in London, said the U.S. military routinely sends surveillance aircraft such as the EP-3 to monitor China's military. The EP-3 can pick up radio, radar, telephone, e-mail and fax traffic, Cook said.
The U.S. plane took off from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, the U.S. military said. It is based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state and was flying with a crew of 22 Navy personnel and one each from the Air Force and the Marines.
Bates Gill, a China expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said China was acting like any military power by trying to ward off "activities aimed at its airspace."
The collision with the American plane is a "small victory" from China's perspective, Gill said. "You've sent the message about intruding in airspace. You forced it to land. You've got your hands on it."
One Chinese academic claimed that in-flight encounters were common with U.S. surveillance aircraft flying along China's coastline listening to its military.
"It's very regular for the American Navy to have their planes intruding into Chinese airspace," said Yan Xuetong, an expert in international studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "The Chinese then send up fighters and chase them out."
Totty, the U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that interceptions are common but denied that U.S. planes routinely intrude on Chinese airspace.
"Our aircraft routinely operate in international air space on reconnaissance missions, and it is routine for Chinese aircraft to respond by intercepting and shadowing us," Totty said.
The EP-3 landed at a military airfield at Lingshui, a town on the southern end of Hainan, the statement said.
Totty said he had no information about whether either airplane had diverted course. "We want to know why contact was made," he said. "They were intercepting us on a routine mission, and during the intercept contact was made. How it happened, we're not able to say at this time."
Cook noted a similar collision in the 1980s between a Soviet fighter jet and a Norwegian P-3 — similar to the EP-3 — over the Barents Sea, which lies north of Norway and Russia. Both planes landed safely, he said.