China believes the constant U.S. military air and sea surveillance and survey operations in China's exclusive economic zone had led to military confrontations between the two sides," the official Xinhua News Agency said, quoting a Defense Ministry statement.
"The way to resolve China-U.S. maritime incidents is for the U.S. to change its surveillance and survey operations policies against China, decrease and eventually stop such operations," the statement said.
What did we say?
No immediate information was available on how the U.S. side responded to China's demand.
The Chinese are really starting to piss me off. We're in international waters. I hope our response was "get bent, you wankers."
We'll file their protest in the appropriate place:
The Chinese have a lot of nerve complaining about espionage, I say.
UPDATE: Strategypage describes the issue, including increased Chinese military activity in the region and the ability of America to observe China's military and equipment from international waters--including new capabilities that will come on line. The big question?
China knows that all this new tech is coming, and wants to keep it as far away from their coasts as possible. The question is, will China risk war by playing rough to keep the Americans away.
We can't let them push us out of international waters. We'd best be prepared to return the roughness. Considering our unarmed EP-3 knocked down the PLA fighter sent up to harass our plane eight years ago, I guess we could manage that.
