Although the crew of the plane has been released and returned to the United States, Washington only "acknowledged [the Chinese] government's intention to raise U.S. reconnaissance missions near China" in a meeting slated between officials of the two countries for April 18. This was stated in a letter to the Chinese minister of foreign affairs from U.S. ambassador Joseph Prueher, released by the White House April 11.

The letter said both "President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have expressed their sincere regret over your missing pilot and aircraft"; stated the "severely crippled [U.S.] aircraft made an emergency landing after following international emergency procedures"; and said the U.S. government was "sorry the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance."

The spy flight, of which there have been a growing number over the past several years, was involved in monitoring electronic signals, including radar and communications, so Washington would have as full a picture as possible of China's military capabilities and operating practices should a conflict break out. Most of the 200 or so U.S. flights around China come from the U.S. airbase in Okinawa, Japan.

A constellation of U.S. spy satellites over China also carry out eavesdropping on telephone and radio conversations and other electronic communications. "If you know a lot about their air defenses, for example if it ever comes to a scrap,"--the U.S. military's euphemism for war--"you can see them, jam them, and stop them," said retired Rear Adm. Eric McVadon, a former defense attaché in Beijing who flew spy planes along the Chinese coast in the early 1960s.

"Cautiously but steadily, the Pentagon is looking at Asia as the most likely arena for future military conflict," wrote Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks. He remarked that the U.S. government has assigned more attack submarines to the Pacific, "more war games and strategic studies centered on Asia" with "more diplomacy aimed at reconfiguring the U.S. military presence in the area."

Each plane in the U.S. Navy's fleet of 12 EP-3 spy planes flew one mission on average every other day, 365 days a year, according to William Arkin, a former U.S. army intelligence analyst. Spy flights targeting north Korea, Arkin says, were averaging 150 a month at the end of 2000. The government of north Korea has protested these probes for decades. In 1969 the north Korean military shot down a Navy EC-121 spy plane, forcing then-president Richard Nixon to suspend manned flights even while escalating the imperialist war against the people of Vietnam. The previous year the government in Pyongyang, following several weeks of warnings to Washington, captured the U.S. spy ship Pueblo and held the 82-member crew hostage for 11 months (see letter from Jack Barnes above).

Arkin notes that "electronic intelligence gathering has become such an intrinsic part of the American way of warfare, it would be deceitful not to admit that these flights have a provocative purpose behind them, either in actively seeking to stimulate Chinese air defenses or in 'mapping' China's networks for destruction in prospective war plans."

Incidents like the April 1 collision or more serious clashes will recur--posing the threat of military confrontation and possible war--as long as the policy of U.S. imperialism continues to be one of deployment of an enormous military force, provocations, and long-term war threats. This is the central question for working people in China and the United States, one not resolved--or even openly discussed by officials from either country--by the outcome of the latest dispute.  
 
U.S. forces poised in the Pacific
The U.S. Pacific Command has some 300,000 military personnel under arms. This includes 47,000 U.S. troops ashore in Japan and another 12,000 soldiers on ships in Japanese waters. Washington has 37,000 GIs based in south Korea and an arsenal of 1,500 strike aircraft, 1,000 rotary aircraft, 5,000 tracked vehicles, 3,000 tanks, and 250 combat ships with four or more carrier battle groups.

Nuclear forces include eight strategic submarines based at Bangor in Washington State, which carry 1,536 nuclear warheads, each with an explosive yield of 100 kilotons, or eight times that of the bomb dropped by Washington on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Earmarked for use in the Pacific on attack submarines are another 120 nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles and an unknown number of air-launched cruise missiles for use on long-range bombers.

The U.S. government does not release information on the targeting of its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are fitted with 2,150 nuclear warheads, according to the U.S. State Department. Washington has a total of 7,295 nuclear warheads for deployment on ICBMs, submarines, or heavy bombers.

The U.S. government maintains a Single Integrated Operation Plan containing a range of nuclear attack options and specific targets to be destroyed in Russia, China, and a number of countries it calls "rogue states," such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, north Korea, and Syria, according to Hans Kristensen, of the Nautilus Institute. It does not disclose these plans publicly, even to U.S. Congressmen. For example, Senator Robert Kerrey issued a statement last December, complaining in a letter to then-defense secretary William Cohen that "for some time I have been asking for details of the [nuclear weapons] targeting plan but I have been told on every occasion that I am not entitled to know."  
 
Arming Taiwan
Washington's military encirclement of China also includes tentative plans to arm Taiwan with destroyers equipped with an antimissile system that could become part of the U.S.-designed "theater missile defense." The broader missile defense plan would be for the United States a "precursor to an American first-strike" capability, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger bluntly admitted at a recent conference with government officials in Europe.

The government of Taiwan is also reportedly requesting submarine-hunting planes and diesel-powered submarines from the U.S. government to add to its already formidable arsenal of advanced equipment. The Chinese people consider Taiwan a part of their country and moves by Washington to deploy this weaponry there would escalate tensions in the region.

Two days after the collision between the U.S. and Chinese aircraft, an F-16 fighter jet from Taiwan successfully launched a Harpoon antiship missile during a joint naval and air force exercise, London's Financial Times reported. The Japanese news agency Kyodo quoted military officials in Taiwan declaring this development would significantly expand their Air Force's capability to attack Chinese warships.

Washington has also begun to integrate the Singaporean military and the armed forces in the Philippines into its military plans. The government of Singapore is building a special pier to meet docking requirements of nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier. Last year the Singapore's troops participated for the first time in "Cobra Gold," the annual U.S.-Thailand military maneuvers. Also last year U.S. forces and those from the Philippines conducted their first joint exercise in years. According to the Washington Post, "U.S. forces will conduct frequent exercises to train Americans and Filipinos to operate together in...full-scale combat."  
 
Why Washington targets China, Korea
The events of the past week underscore the long-term drive by U.S. imperialism to reverse the gains of the 1949 Chinese revolution, in which the country's workers and peasants overthrew the landlord-capitalist regime and began expropriating the emerging capitalist class in industry and agriculture. To the shock of the wealthy ruling class in the United States, China, which was to be the big prize of the victorious imperialist power coming out of World War II, was suddenly ripped out of the world imperialist system of exploitation by millions of working people.

Through revolutionary mobilizations and pressure from the toilers the Chinese government eliminated imperialist pillage, nationalized property relations, established a state monopoly of foreign trade, and began implementing a degree of economic planning. Despite the bureaucratic caste that dominated the country--with all the distortions from forced collectivization of agriculture and bureaucratic methods of economic planning and management of industry--the conquests of the socialist revolution advanced China as a modern nation.

The social gains of the revolution are striking when comparing China with India, two countries that are similar in many ways, including size--1.2 billion in China, 1 billion in India. Both countries have also experienced centuries of colonial domination and superexploitation. However, India's infant mortality rate at 64.9 deaths per 1,000 live births is more than double that of China, which is 28.9 per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth in India is 62.5 years, in China 71.4 years. Literacy in China is 81.5 percent, in India 52 percent.

Because of the socialist revolution in China workers and peasants have a different view of themselves, their right to job, health care, and other social rights than the toilers in semicolonial countries like India. This is what the U.S. rulers will confront in attempting to overthrow the nationalized economy, restore a capitalist regime, eliminate the foreign trade monopoly, and open up China as a market and field of investments. They have less illusions that anything short of military force and war will ultimately be needed to transform the country back into a vast colony and thereby help alleviate the crisis of world capitalism.  
 
China's defensive weapons
China's military is mainly defensive and its nuclear weapons capabilities are mostly regional. China has fewer than 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles, which use liquid fuel, meaning they cannot be fired on short notice. Nor do they have precise targeting capability as do Washington's. The ability to counter and neutralize this relatively small nuclear arsenal is one of the hoped-for goals of Washington's antimissile program.

Beijing acquired four Russian Kilo-class submarines for operations in nearby waters, hoping to deter Washington from dispatching carrier battle groups to the region. China has few modern fighters among its 4,000 warplanes, one ship that can transport munitions, and two supply vessels that can carry fuel and water to ships. Its military has the capacity to move about 10,000 troops and little capability to launch an amphibious assault even across the Taiwan Strait--hardly a force that could retake the province.

While waging a propaganda offensive against China and in defense of its right to continue the spy flights, Washington had little in the way of serious economic threats it could make against its adversary in this dispute. Various government officials said that they would work to oppose China's entry into the World Trade Organization and Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics if the crew and plane were not immediately returned. Many in the U.S. capitalist class though sought to play down these threats, opting for now to continue to seek openings in China for development of export industries, trade, and investment.

The bureaucratic layer that rules China is not interested in a conflict with Washington, as it seeks to integrate China into the world capitalist economy, maintaining its policy of political accommodation to imperialism while carrying out repression of working-class struggles in China as part of defending their privileges and power.

For example, the Chinese government banned demonstrations against Washington around the plane collision despite popular indignation at the events. More than 50 universities and colleges have requested permission to demonstrate against the U.S. government's provocation. Instead, the Education Ministry issued a directive to faculty and students instructing them to "not take to the street."

"In the last few years China's been making too many concessions," said Jian Yi, a student in Beijing, according to a New York Times report. "The government's primary foreign policy goal has been good relations with the United States." He added that many people in the country are still angry over Washington's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago.

Last week the Militant echoed Chinese officials who presented the emergency landing of the U.S. spy plane as a violation of China's sovereignty. But working people should have no objection to a plane in a Mayday situation making an emergency landing at the nearest airport to avoid death or injury of its crew. At the same time Chinese government officials have the right to hold the crew for questioning as part of investigating the incident.  
 
 
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