China agrees to return seized drone: Pentagon
the South China Sea.” Chinese authorities told US officials that they planned to return the drone, but the two sides were still working out where, when and precisely how the device would be handed back, said two Defense Department officials, who talked about the negotiations with China only on the condition of anonymity. One of the officials said the Pentagon expected the matter to be resolved in the coming days without further acrimony.
The Pentagon statement came hours after China warned that the highly charged episode would not be resolved easily.
In its own statement, the Chinese Defence Ministry said it was in talks with the United States but criticised Washington for what it called an “inappropriate” exaggeration of the dispute. The American reaction, it said, is “not conducive to solving the problem smoothly”.
“We hereby express regrets for that,” the ministry said. It said the drone, which Chinese and US analysts say was most likely used to gather intelligence about Chinese submarine activity in contested waters, would be returned to the United States in a “proper way.”
Trump entered the fray Saturday morning, accusing China of acting improperly.
“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,” he said on Twitter.
The overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, said on its social media account Saturday night that the Chinese capture of the drone was legal because rules about drone activities had not been clearly written. “This is the gray area,” the newspaper said. “If the US military can send the drone, surely China can seize it.”
In its statement, the Defence Ministry scolded the US over what it called its long-standing practice of conducting “close-in reconnaissance and military surveys” in waters near China.
The Chinese government has often complained to senior US officials, including President Barack Obama, that the United States repeatedly intrudes by air and ship into waters close to China. The ministry’s statement reiterated the complaint, saying: “China firmly opposes it and urges the US side to stop such operations.”
A Chinese naval vessel seized the drone, which had been launched on Thursday from a US ship, the Bowditch, in waters off the Philippines. The US crew was in the process of retrieving the device when a small boat dispatched from the Chinese vessel took it as the US sailors looked on.
The action came two weeks after Trump angered Beijing by speaking by phone to the leader of Taiwan, and almost a week after he criticised China for building military bastions in the South China Sea. US officials were trying to determine whether the seizure was a response to Trump or whether it was one more escalatory step in China’s long-term plan to try to push the US Navy out of the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest commercial and military waterways.
The Pentagon formally protested the capture of the drone, saying it was stolen US military property. The Pentagon said the drone had been carrying out scientific research.
US experts, however, said the drone might have been designed to help follow China’s submarine buildup, a critical part of the country’s growing naval strength as it seeks unfettered control of the South China Sea and unimpeded access to the Pacific and Indian oceans.
A retired Chinese rear admiral, Yang Yi, speaking earlier at a conference sponsored by a state-run newspaper, the Global Times, said the Americans had invited the Chinese sailors to take the drone by sailing in the waters close to the Scarborough Shoal, fishing grounds that are claimed by China and the Philippines.
Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, who is nurturing warm ties with China and has warned he may break long-standing military relations with the US, took a conciliatory approach over the Chinese action.
“I will not impose anything on China,” he said at a news conference in Manila on Saturday. “Why? Because politics in Southeast Asia is changing.” This was a reference to his tilt away from the United States, a treaty ally, since taking office in June. He referred to China as “the kindest soul of all”.
The Philippines also took a forgiving attitude after the release of satellite images Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that appeared to show that China has installed weapons on the seven artificial islands it has built in the Spratly archipelago, not far from the Philippines in the South China Sea.
“There is nothing that we can do about that now, whether or not it is being done for purposes of further militarising these facilities that they have put up,” the foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay Jr, said, reflecting the weak state of the Philippines military. “We cannot stop China at this point in time and say, ‘Do not put that up.’”
By seizing the drone so close to the Philippines, China may have been trying to further weaken the frayed US alliance with Manila, US experts said.
The conciliatory reaction by the Philippines, even as the United States was making stern demands on Beijing, would complicate Washington’s efforts to convince China that its actions were unacceptable, a senior US military official said on Saturday.
In an important ruling in July, an international tribunal in The Hague decided against China, saying that the Scarborough Shoal was entitled only to a 12-mile (19-kilometre) territorial zone, not 200 miles as the Chinese assert. China has refused to recognise the ruling.
Duterte on Saturday said he was ignoring The Hague ruling even though the case had been brought by the previous Philippines government. “In the play of politics now, I will set aside the arbitral ruling,” he said.
The drone incident, according to a Pentagon account, began when a Chinese navy vessel that was shadowing the Bowditch – a common practice in the South China Sea – pulled up not far from the ship. It then dispatched a small boat to seize the drone as the US crew was recovering it from the water. The Pentagon described the vehicle as an unclassified “ocean glider” system used to gather military oceanographic data such as salinity, water temperature and sound speed.