China says US spy aircraft intruded into no-fly zone in ‘naked provocation’
China says the United States has flown a spy aircraft into a Chinese no-fly zone during live-fire military drills, calling the flight “naked provocation.”
In a statement on Tuesday, China’s Defense Ministry said that earlier in the day, an American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane had intruded into a no-fly zone in China’s northern military region, where the Chinese military was holding live-fire drills.
The move is “seriously interfering in normal exercise activities,” the ministry said, stressing that it could easily have caused an “unexpected incident.”
“It was an act of naked provocation, and China is resolutely opposed to it, and has already lodged stern representations with the US side,” China’s Defense Ministry said in its statement.
The ministry, however, did not say exactly where the spying activity had taken place.
The Chinese military is currently conducting drills in the Bohai Sea, located on the east coast of mainland China. Other exercises are also being carried out in the Yellow Sea and South China Sea.
“China demands [that] the US side immediately stop this kind of provocative behavior and take actual steps to safeguard peace and stability in the region,” the statement further said, adding that Washington’s move ran counter to China-US rules on behavior at sea and in the air and international norms.
Back in April 2001, an intercept of an American spy aircraft by a Chinese warplane led to a collision that fatally wounded the Chinese pilot and forced the US plane to make an emergency landing at a base on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.
The new intrusion is expected to further deteriorate the already-strained ties between Beijing and Washington, which are at loggerheads over a host of issues, including trade, a new security law introduced in Hong Kong, the origins and handling of the COVID-19 disease, Taiwan, and the disputed South China Sea.
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