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China’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday it had been in talks with the United States about returning an underwater drone taken by a Chinese naval vessel in the South China Sea, but the US was not helping by “hyping up” the issue.
The drone was taken on Thursday, the first seizure of its kind in recent memory, about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippines, just as the USNS Bowditch was about to retrieve the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), US officials said.
The Defense Ministry said a Chinese naval vessel discovered a piece of “unidentified equipment” and checked it to prevent any navigational safety issues, before discovering it was a US drone.
“China decided to return it to the US side in an appropriate manner, and China and the US have all along been in communication about it,” the ministry said on its website.
“During this process, the US side’s unilateral and open hyping up is inappropriate, and is not beneficial to the smooth resolution of this issue. We express regret at this,” it added.
US President-elect Donald Trump weighed in to the row on Saturday, tweeting: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.”
Without directly saying whether the drone was operating in waters China considers its own, the ministry said US ships and aircraft have for a long period been carrying out surveillance and surveys in “the presence” of Chinese waters.
“China is resolutely opposed to this, and demands the US stops this kind of activity,” it said.
China will remain on alert for these sorts of activities and take necessary steps to deal with them, the ministry said without elaborating.
Earlier, the Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, cited an unidentified Chinese source as saying they believed the issue would be resolved smoothly.
The United States says the drone was operating lawfully.
“The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea,” a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water – that it was US property,” the official said.
The Pentagon confirmed the incident at a news briefing on Friday, and said the drone used commercially available technology and sold for about $150,000.
Still, the Pentagon viewed China’s seizure seriously since it had effectively taken US military property.
“It is ours, and it is clearly marked as ours and we would like it back. And we would like this not to happen again,” Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said.
Heightened concerns
The seizure will add to concerns about China’s increased military presence and aggressive posture in the disputed South China Sea, including its militarization of maritime outposts.
A US research group said this week that new satellite imagery indicated China has installed weapons, including anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, on all seven artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea.
The drone seizure coincided with sabre-rattling from Chinese state media and some in its military establishment after Trump cast doubt on whether Washington would stick to its nearly four-decades-old policy of recognizing that Taiwan is part of “one China.”
Those comments came after Trump took a telephone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on December 2, prompting a diplomatic protest from China.
President Barack Obama said on Friday it was appropriate for Trump to take a fresh look at US policy toward Taiwan, but he cautioned that a shift could lead to significant consequences in the US. relationship with Beijing, as the notion that Taiwan is part of “one China” is central to China’s view of itself as a nation.
In any water where commercial or fishing vessel travel it is unethical to install anything in the water without informing the international community to avoid possible accident, nobody will know what and how a foreign object in the water will cause in the first place. US authority is reckless in putting equipment without informing other and should bare the cost in such incident.
Go china GO….The free world is proud of China
The next time other should destroy unidentified military object install by busy body to save the argument.
China is pretty much the dominant world power now, it has a beautiful 5000 year old civilisation and they do not savage other nations but prefer trade.
America is finding it very hard to digest this facts. A few year ago China sent shivers down the spine of America by taking out a furthest redundant upper space satellite through one of its hyper space rockets. It was a signal, and it reached those for whom it was intended.
As for this affair of oceanic drone; china picked it up with ease and that again is a signal that how easy it was for china to not only detect it but also disable this so called stealth drones and take it over, the intended message is loud and clear.
Its a seperate matter China is a master of photocopying the entire drone in few hours and the blue print is all they wanted once again demonstrating how easy it was for them to compromise many years of secret western technology in matter of hours. By returning it they are further humiliating Americans, it is their classical wise strategy described in "The Art of war" perhaps the only country that has an ancient document fully explaning the doctrine of warfare. The book is so comprehensive that even the western world militaries sutdy it.
In the 1960s China captured two divisions worth of Indian army equipment when the Indian army ran away during a skirmish in border regions, As usual China first humiliated the slum-dweller Indian army, then cleaned and repaired the equipment and returned it in an international ceremony further shaming and humiliating the embarrassed cowardly slum dweller Indians.…It was a signal after which slum dwellers never ever raised their eyes towards china.
Why is USA conducting a mi,itary survey to collect data to determine sonar ranges in the seas next to China?