The Captured Plane
With Steven Mufson
Washington Post foreign affairs reporter
Monday, April 2, 2001

Post State Department correspondent Steven Mufson, talked about the holding of the U.S. Navy spy plane and crew in China and its implications for U.S.-Chinese relations. He also answered questions on President Bush's request for the return of crew members, the issue of warship sales to Taiwan, and the detention of American University professor Gao Zhan.

Mulfson joined The Post in 1989 in the New York bureau covering financial news. In early 1990, he moved to D.C. to cover the Bush administration's economic policy. He has covered the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury, the IMF, World Bank, and a variety of other policy issues. From mid-1994 to 1999 he served as the Post's correspondent in Beijing.

Read the transcript below:

Towson, Md.: What measures do you believe the Bush administration is prepared to take if the Chinese government continues to refuse communication between the crew and the U.S.?

Steven Mufson: I think the Bush administration will try to be restrained at first. But if the incident drags on, I think it will first affect military relations and other government-to-government contacts. It could also affect the decision the administration takes on the sale of weapons to Taiwan, and how that sale is described. Finally, I think the administration would continue or maybe step up its military activities near China so that it doesn't appear to have been intimidated. These are my guesses, not based on conversations with officials, who are being restrained at the moment.

Orlando, Fla.:
Steven, Is it likely that the U.S. aircrew will be harmed to get information and held for an extended period?

Steven Mufson: I don't think the crew will be harmed. That would be a severe escalation by the Chinese government. I'm not even sure they would be held for an extended period, because I think the Chinese government also doesn't really want this incident to get out of hand. A prolonged standoff will only encourage nationalist sentiments that might be hard to control, and the government wants to be able to control this, and other, situations. Again I'm speculating, but one thing China might do is release the crew and keep the plane, though I don't think the administration will be very happy about that either.

Pasadena, Calif.: What would be the response of America if the Chinese were to perform reconnaissance just outside U.S. waters on a consistent basis? Such actions appear to be slightly aggressive.

Steven Mufson: I'm sure the United States would regard it as aggressive and confrontational if China were to conduct surveillance off the US coast. To some extent it's a double standard. On the other hand, the United States does undertake responsibilities toward free trade, free shipping, etc that China does not undertake. This is part of being the only superpower.

Fairfax, Va.: What incentive do the Chinese have to return the plane? They could return the crew, but keep the plane.

Steven Mufson: Naturally China will be very curious about the plane. One thing we don't know is whether the crew damaged the equipment on the plane before leaving it. I believe this would be normal procedure if landing in a hostile, or at least potentially unfriendly, place. If the crew did that, there might be less at stake.

Washington, D.C.: Why is the Chinese government making these passive-aggressive moves against the U.S.? Have situations like these (detainment of U.S. citizens and scholars, etc.) been happening all along, and now they're just getting more press, or could it possibly be that the Chinese government is testing our new administration to see how far they can go?

Steven Mufson: This is a good question and we can only speculate. To some extent, detentions happen from time to time and we pay more attention at times like this. The failure of China to grant the consular access US officials are supposed to have exacerbates the situation. Under international treaty, after a US citizen is detained for, I believe, 48 hours a foreign government is supposed to notify the US government and allow access to the detainee. This was not followed in the case of the 5-year-old American son of American University researcher Gao Zhan. To some extent, it's possible that China is testing the new president. I'm not sure the leadership wants to test him though so much as guide him toward warm relations. China wants to head off a big arms sale package to Taiwan and it wants to host the 2008 Olympics. The Olympics decision comes this summer. These sorts of tensions won't help. So I think there's another possibility and that is that one part of the Chinese government wants to challenge the US -- maybe a part of the military -- and if there's damage to US-China relations, so be it. But we really don't know for sure.

Washington, D.C.: What precisely does international law provide for regarding the United States' ability to recover the crew and the plane? Does the answer depend in part on where the collision took place (i.e., international airspace v. Chinese airspace)?

Steven Mufson: You're beyond my expertise here. I think that as long as the incident took place in international waters, that the United States is entitled to recover the crew and the plane. If the plane had been in Chinese air space, then China could claim the plane had been legitimately captured and that would make negotiations to obtain the release of the plane and crew would be more complicated and the United States would be in a weaker position.

Vienna, Va.: If the plane was capable of flying to Hianan Island, why wasn't it capable flying to Taiwan or and ditching the plane near an American ship? Getting clearance from a Chinese military ground controllers seems to me to have many bureaucratic ramifications.

Steven Mufson: Taiwan is a long trip from where this plane was. It would have been closer to Vietnam. But given the damage to the plane, it seems that even that would have been too far to travel and landing in Hainan was its only hope of survival. This type of plane cannot land on an aircraft carrier; it's too big. In any case, I don't think any carrier was in the region. This US plane flew all the way from a base in Japan.

Washington, D.C.: Do computer systems on sensitive military planes have a software "poison pill/virus" that automatically destroys software/data if any unauthorized tampering is detected?

Steven Mufson: I don't know about a poison pill, but I believe the plane should have had equipment or devices that would destroy the equipment and the data it contained.

South Hadley, Mass.: Through a series of political and military blunders, the U.S. seems to be rapidly draining any remaining political capital it had. This, combined with Bush's perceived weakness on international relations issues seems to leave the U.S. in a rather poor position to negotiate in the current situation. Is anyone really to blame in this situation, or is it just a series of poorly timed blunders under the current and previous administration?

Steven Mufson: I think people will increasingly wonder how much of the disarray in key international areas -- the Middle East, China, the Koreas, U.S.-Russia relations -- is President Bush's responsibility. Clearly he doesn't have a lot of experience on foreign issues. Of course, all these situations are complicated and many problems were inherited. The administration is barely two months old, and it's important to remember that few appointed officials have been confirmed.

South Hadley, Mass: Good afternoon Mr. Mufson. Reminds one of the Pueblo doesn't it? Where are the carriers and where are they heading?

Thank you

Steven Mufson: Officials have said that three U.S. destroyers that were passing through the region will stay there for a while. But I think that in the end this will have to be resolved diplomatically. It does remind one of the Pueblo. I think that took 11 months to resolve.

Washington, D.C.: A colleague of mine proposed to me that China could seize this opportunity to launch an invasion of Taiwan, including a tactical nuclear strike against any U.S. warships near their territorial waters. I thought that while the Chinese might rattle their sabers against Taiwan, that any direct military confrontation, much less nuclear, was so unlikely as to be essentially impossible.

Not meaning to sound flip, but do you consider a Taiwan invasion/nuclear attack on U.S. warships to be likely? Unlikely? Basically out of the question? Just a quick explanation as to why would be helpful.

Steven Mufson: I would say such an attack would be highly unlikely. China does not possess the equipment or capability to actually invade Taiwan. It does possess the ability to intimidate and disrupt Taiwan. That's different. Let's remember that good U.S.-China relations also benefit China, which has a huge trade surplus with the United States. The Chinese Communist Party has made economic advancement the centerpiece of its strategy for the past two decades, and plans to continue that for decades to come. War, and the destabilization that comes with it, will only undermine that effort and eventually could destabilize the Party's rule. I don't think the Chinese leadership really wanted to be in this position any more than the Bush administration did. The question China must be wrestling with is what to do now.

Palo Alto, Calif.: If we have known for three months that these encounters in the air were getting more dangerous, why were our concerns about the risks raised only at low levels? Wouldn't this have been preventable with stronger leadership?

Steven Mufson: That's a question I've heard from some people on Capitol Hill, and will probably come up in some Congressional hearing soon.

Alexandria, Va.: Shouldn't we expect the Chinese to take their time returning the plane after a thorough examination of it? After all, isn't that exactly what we did after the Russian pilot defected with the Mig Foxbat to Japan in the 1980s. Any appeal for the immediate return of the plane seems to be an empty gesture.

Steven Mufson: Someone I was speaking to earlier mentioned that Soviet plane and the defector. Of course in this case the U.S. plane and crew were not defecting and supposedly there is no Cold War with China.

Los Angeles, Calif.: The Chinese government is stating that the plane landed at an airbase without permission. How likely is it that the Navy crew was told to land or be shot down? In this case why didn't the pilot ditch the plane at sea and await U.S. SAR?

Steven Mufson: Assuming that the plane was able to communicate clearly to the control tower at the Chinese airport, there probably wasn't time for the Chinese officials there to get instructions before the plane had to land. I think it's difficult to ditch a plane like that at sea and for the crew to survive.

Boston, Mass.: When the U.S. bombed Iraq radar installations he used the word "routine" to describe the mission. It turned out to be otherwise. Today the president said that the P-3 was engaged in routine maneuvers. What effect does the earlier misrepresentation have on the diplomatic activities underway. If I'm left wondering just how routine these missions are, is it fair to assume that the Chinese are as well?

Steven Mufson: These are important questions that we will be asking the administration officials we speak to today. It is certainly important to question all assumptions about this. And yes, the more often officials lead people astray about something, the more it will undermine their credibility when they most need it, such as in this case.

Washington, D.C.: Can you compare China's claim to the South China Sea (e.g. Spratly Islands, etc.) to how the U.S. treats the Carribean? We have a 200-mile limit, but the pictures I have seen looks like they are claiming a lot more than 200 miles.

Steven Mufson: The Spratly Islands are more than 200 miles from the Chinese coast, I believe. International law gives nations 12 miles sovereignty. China has made sweeping claims to the South China Sea, but in practice has respected international traffic there. At the moment, several southeast Asian nations dispute China's claims to the Spratlys. Even if China's claims to the Spratly Islands were recognized, I don't think that would give it sovereignty to the airspace where this plane supposedly was.

Vienna, Va.: Bush likes to blame Clinton for all his problems. Do you think that he will to blame somehow the incident on Clinton?

Steven Mufson: The only way to do that would be to say that years of accommodation have given Beijing the wrong idea about what it could get away with. But that overlooks the fact that Clinton did send US warships to Taiwan during the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1995. That argument would also assume that this wasn't an accident, which I think it was.

Chicago, Ill.: If the Chinese board the plane and tap sensitive information, what kind of retaliation would the U.S. think of?

Steven Mufson: I think it will affect the tenor and substance of US-China relations in all areas and help shape the attitude of our new president and make him more leery of assurances by China in a whole range of areas. Bush seems to attach importance to personal relationships and to divide leaders among those he can trust and those he can't. This wouldn't be a great way to start.

Woodbridge, Va.: What, if anything, can GW truly do at this point? It is my opinion that we are a day late and a dollar short -- meaning the Chinese have already boarded and inspected the airplane.

The crew was suppose to destroy equipment and destroy documentation prior to landing. Is this something, considering how rapidly these types of emergencies can transpire, be the reality or just wishful thinking?

And, in the event that this was not accomplished, will the returning servicemen face reprimands and dismissals for not carrying out these orders (and hopefully it is not a "we will wait and see" type answer)?

Steven Mufson: I don't think that Chinese officials could have gleaned a lot in the short time they have had to examine the plane. So it might not be too late if there are things intact. And I think that the US officers on board would be punished upon their return if they failed to destroy the equipment or data on board. I believe that since the Pueblo, military officers have been trained to do that and that it doesn't necessarily take that much time.

Washington, D.C.: This is unbelievable. Yes, I understand this is Washington, but I am hard pressed to believe that domestic political concerns are really what's important about this.

The action of the Chinese government to deny access to the crew of this plane is indefensible. Why would Bush "need" to blame anyone else?

Steven Mufson: I didn't mean to suggestion that President Bush needs to blame anyone. I think the administration is eager to resolve this with as small a flap as possible. It's the middle of the night in China right now, so the next 18 hours should tell a lot about how China wants to resolve it. If China wants to resolve the situation, it would be reasonable to expect consular access to the crew as a first step.

New York, N.Y.: What does the PRC have to gain by dragging its feet on this issue? It would seem to be in the interest of both the U.S. and China to write the incident off as an accident and minimize the damage to the Sino-American relations.

Steven Mufson: I agree that it would be in the interests of both countries to resolve this quickly and, relatively, painlessly. As I said earlier, I don't think that China's leaders gain anything by whipping up Chinese sentiment against the United States. That could be destabilizing. And I don't think China gains anything by riling up US opinion either. The United States is China's biggest trading partner and a source of technology and capital. The US-China relationship is Beijing's most important foreign relationship.

Arlington, Va.: What is the Pueblo incident referred to in prior posts?

Steven Mufson: The USS PUEBLO was a U. S. Navy vessel sent on an intelligence mission off the coast of North Korea. On January 23, 1968, the USS PUEBLO was attacked by North Korean naval vessels and MiG jets. Eighty-two surviving crew members were captured and held prisoner for 11 months.

Forest City, Pa: Mr Mufson

Isn't it true that the U.S. military, specifically our nuclear capability, is a fire extinguisher compared to a Chinese match. The Chinese have about 20 liquid fuel, one warhead ballistic missiles while one of our 17 Ohio class subs has almost 2000 warheads that could be delivered in about five minutes. Why do you think so many American people are afraid of China?

Steven Mufson: You are right that the US military dwarfs China's. The issue isn't one of going toe to toe. There are only two issues as I understand it. One: whether China would be able to do enough damage to US forces that might be called upon to intervene in the case of a China-Taiwan conflict to convince the United States NOT to act in such a scenario. Two: whether China can, or thinks it can, blackmail the United States with the threat of a single nuclear bomb to prevent the United States from intervening on Taiwan or elsewhere.

Washington, D.C.: Do you believe in all this talk of "strained U.S.-China relations"? Though I hear reports with nationalistic undertones about reactions from Chinese citizens, I really find it hard to believe that things are that bad and that we are truly seen as a demonic imperialist. Do you believe relations can and will improve?

Steven Mufson: China's a big place. I think the average person is concerned with improving his lot, much as the average American is primarily concerned with that. So when you talk about nationalist sentiment, you're talking about the sentiments of a smaller group, but still possibly influential among Chinese decision makers. The US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war over Kosovo had a definite impact, I think, even among Chinese who were favorably inclined toward the the United States. China is still insecure as a nation, and sensitive to slights, both real and imagined. It did not trust the US explanation of that bombing as accidental and it might not trust US explanations of this incident either.

Richmond Heights, Mo.: Today we were watching our nonchalant President speaking to a group of restaurant industry folks at lunch, pushing the merits of his tax "concepts" to their industry. Meanwhile, three battle boats are headed for the China sea as Chinese nationalists are in the streets asking for more than an apology from the responsible parties (a no win situation at best). Could someone please call "April fools" as the same above President is making demands upon these people who may be patiently waiting to either take us out- or at least teach us a lesson (How's this for an education program?) THIS IS NOT A CASUAL SITUATION -- Steve please address the seriousness of this scenario -- thank you

Steven Mufson: To borrow a phrase applied to another president, maybe the president is compartmentalizing?

Vancouver, Wash.: Please explain the terms in use during these sensitive situation -- the U.S. mission is reconnaissance and the Chinese is spy right by their own neighborhood. Just a comparatively interesting use of the English language.

Steven Mufson: Great point. One person's reconnaissance mission is another's spy mission. I'll watch out for that when writing.

washingtonpost.com: Our distinguished guest Steve Mufson has to go report and write the story that he has been talking about. We wish him well. Readers interested in more about the Captured Spy Plane, please read a transcript of a discussion with Arthur Waldron, director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, starting at 3:30 EDT.