Biden in Beijing: Between the Moon and the East China Sea

By Jiayang Fan

The New Yorker - December 4, 2013 

Before Joe Biden arrived in Beijing this morning, as part of his tour of East Asia, the state-run People’s Liberation Army Daily openly applauded an anonymous post on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, that criticized the U.S. as “an initiator of plots.” The post called on every Chinese person to be on alert for “Western anti-China powers,” because such forces could “take advantage of social instability to harm the Chinese people.” It was a fitting welcome on a trip that has been tense from the start.
For more than a week, China had been engaged in provocative games above the East China Sea, declaring an air-defense identification zone more than two hundred miles beyond its coast. As Chinese officials have been quick to point out, the demarcation of such zones by established nations is not uncommon. A unilateral determination of the zone, however, especially when said zone overlaps with zones of China’s neighbors—in this case, three American allies: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea—is less conventional. In response, Barack Obama sent two B-52 bombers on a “military exercise” through the area unannounced. Emboldened, Japan and South Korea quickly followed suit with their own aircraft. Shortly thereafter, China answered with fighter jets and a warning that it will not hesitate to take what it described as “emergency defensive actions” against those who do not comply.

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