ABC NEWS WORLD NEWS TONIGHT (6:30 PM ET) April 2, 2001, Monday
UNITED STATES AND CHINESE RELATIONSHIP AFTER COLLISION
PETER JENNINGS, anchor:
We begin this Monday with a very difficult situation between the US and China, between the Bush administration and the communist leaders of China. It is not yet a crisis but from the moment a Chinese fighter jet and the US reconnaissance plane collided on Saturday, it has all the ingredients to become one. Here's the latest. The 24 members of the crew are still being held on the island of Hainan, off the South China coast, where they made an emergency landing on Saturday night. The Chinese have said that US officials can see them tomorrow. President Bush said today, tomorrow wasn't 'soon enough.'
President GEORGE W. BUSH: The Chinese must promptly allow us to have contact with the 24 airmen and women that are there, and return our plane to us without any further tampering.
JENNINGS: We have several people standing by to bring us up to date on this. We go first to our national security correspondent John McWethy.
John, one of the things the US military did today was send quite a strong message to the government of China.
JOHN McWETHY reporting:
But there is one mixed signal tonight, Peter. Three American warships at this morning, the US had ordered to stay in the area of that Chinese island, partly as a sign of US displeasure, they're now being sent home, perhaps an effort to lower the temperature.
As for the 24 men and women who were on the American plane, US officials believe they are being held somewhere on this Chinese air base at Lingshui. Chinese sources say they're at a guest house. Based on the US pilot's final radio transmission, American officials now believe the flight crew was forced off their plane at gunpoint soon after landing. When their EP-3 Aries surveillance plane, similar to this, was bumped by a Chinese jet fighter, the American plane reported damage to a propeller, engine and wing. The Chinese fighter apparently crashed into the ocean, the pilot lost. Using American spy satellite images and some communications intercepts, officials say the Chinese appear to have been inside the US plane nonstop since Saturday.
Mr. TONY CORDESMAN (ABC News Military Analyst): Two days of crash effort certainly could give you a lot of information on how the aircraft is structured, something about its technology, time to make some preliminary probes into the hard drives.
McWETHY: But US sources say it appears the air crew did manage to disable, destroy or erase the memories of at least some of the most sensitive equipment on the plane. That includes cryptographic code machines and computers that recorded information from the day's mission. But if the Chinese were to hold the EP-3 Aries longer and take it apart, it could be a bonanza.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (Director, GlobalSecurity.org): The United States has spent billions of dollars and decades perfecting the technology on the Aries. There is simply no other country that could copy this capability unless they got one of ours.
McWETHY: This aircraft gathers electronic signals like an airborne vacuum cleaner. That provides the US with crucial insights into what China's military is doing and where. How its radar, its missiles, aircraft and ships could be jammed or destroyed in a war.
(OC) The US tonight has designated a repair team to go in and fix that damage to the American plane. All the Chinese have to say, Peter, is, 'Yes.'
JENNINGS: Thank you very much, John.
The ball is very much in the Chinese court at the moment so let's go straight to Beijing where ABC's Mark Litke is standing by.
Mark, on a lot of the Chinese Internet sites we heard a fair amount of anger from the Chinese that the US had, as they put it, 'invaded the air space.' What's the general reaction official and unofficial?
MARK LITKE reporting:
It is still very difficult to judge official here Peter. It is Tuesday morning here now and word has just come in the last few hours that US officials will be allowed to visit the airmen being held later today and the Chinese foreign minister now says he hopes for a swift solution to this crisis. But it is still very difficult to judge here exactly what is going on.
The reports on state-run television have been straightforward and unemotional accusing the US plane of causing the collision, announcing that the search continues for the missing Chinese jet pilot. Nothing about the fate of the American airmen, which has infuriated the US ambassador here.
Mr. JOSEPH PRUEHER (United States Ambassador to China): It is inexplicable and unacceptable and of great concern to the most senior leaders in the United States government that the air crew has been held incommunicado, and the Chinese so far have given us no explanation for holding the crew.
LITKE: There wasn't much sympathy for that view on the streets of Beijing where many seem to accept the government's line, that this is an example of American military aggression. There was even a small anti-US protest in Hong Kong today. Some outspoken Chinese say the US has 'no right to make any demands at all.'
Professor YAN XUE TONG (Qinghua University): First, this plane is on Chinese territory. Second, and--if--this plane knocked the Chinese airplane down to the sea and so China has the right to do the investigation.
LITKE: So what will China's leaders do next? Well, a nasty confrontation over the collision could hinder China's bid for the Olympics or its entry into the World Trade Organization. But there are hardliners here who may want to hold the plane and crew longer, to express China's anger over US plans for a missile defense system in Asia and plans to sell new weapons to Taiwan.
(OC) One thing both US and Chinese officials agree on at this hour, if this issue is not solved very soon, it has the potential for causing even more serious damage to an already-shaky Washington-Beijing relationship.
JENNINGS: Thanks very much, Mark Litke in Beijing. They're in Beijing, by the way, because they won't let reporters, obviously, go to Hainan island and not hard to understand that the Chinese and the US see this from very different points of view. Which is why several China experts tell Mark and us today, this might get solved fairly quickly or get really ugly.
Copyright 2001 ABC NEWS
