A Chinese jet crashed into a US spy plane
Causing a major diplomatic incident
And 20 years later,
The CCP is celebrating its propaganda victory
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
Last week was the 20th anniversary of the Hainan Island incident.
On April 1, 2001, a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US reconnaissance plane above the South
China Sea.
The Chinese jet crashed, but the US plane managed to land...on Hainan Island, in China.
The collision caused a major diplomatic incident between the US and China.
It was also the first big foreign policy test for the George W. Bush administration.
That is, after someone finally convinced President Bush that the collision actually happened
and was not in fact an elaborate April Fool’s Day joke set up by Dick Cheney.
He’s such a kidder.
We’ve never talked about the Hainan Island incident on this show.
It happened way before China Uncensored—even before Youtube.
But US-China relations are still feeling the repercussions of that incident even 20 years
later.
So let’s take a look back at what happened.
April 2001.
It was a different time.
China Uncensored didn’t exist yet.
But if we did, we probably would have had a Geocities website.
Which you could have found by Asking Jeeves on your Netscape Navigator.
And YouTube wasn’t around, so China Uncensored would probably just be Flash animations where
I talked about the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party while answering emails.
It would have been very popular.
On April 1, 2001, a US Navy EP-3 maritime patrol aircraft was on a routine surveillance
flight over the South China Sea...
when it was intercepted by two Chinese J-8 fighter jets.
That was not unusual, either.
But the Chinese jets had a habit of getting dangerously close to US planes.
And they had been getting more aggressive.
To the point that the US had already made official protests to China about the issue.
One of the Chinese pilots, Wang Wei, was especially known for pulling dangerous stunts.
After the Chinese jets appeared, the US plane turned and started heading back to base.
At this point they were about 70 miles off of the coast of Hainan Island, over international
waters in the South China Sea.
But then, things turned deadly.
I’ll tell you how after the break.
Welcome back.
Chinese pilot Wang Wei was flying dangerously close to the US reconnaissance plane over
the South China Sea.
Here’s what happened according to a PBS Frontline interview with the American pilot,
Lieutenant Shane Osborn.
The footage is from an earlier incident.
Osborn said the Chinese pilot came up next to the plane once, and then a second time.
The second time, he was only about 10 feet away.
He could see his face.
It made the American crew nervous.
The third time, the Chinese jet came up from underneath, and its nose collided with the
nose of the American plane.
Both planes began to fall.
The US plane dove 8,000 ft while upside down, but Osborn, the pilot, managed to get it under
control.
He was forced to make an emergency landing on the airstrip of a military base in Hainan,
an island that’s part of China.
After hitting the US plane, Wang Wei’s jet broke up in the air and he parachuted into
the sea.
Despite a search and rescue mission by the PLA, his body was never found.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party had this US reconnaissance plane grounded on its
airstrip.
They also had its 24 crewmembers, which they spent days interrogating.
Plus, the Party’s propaganda apparatus was getting into gear.
The main goal was to blame the Americans for the crash.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the US plane purposely turned toward the Chinese plane,
bumping it and causing it to crash.
That might have been based on the account of Wang Wei’s wingman, Zhao Yu, who said
that he saw the head and left wing of the US plane bump into Wang’s plane.
Although Zhao didn’t say that the US plane turned toward the Chinese jet.
The Foreign Ministry also said that the US should bear full responsibility for the incident,
and also pay compensation for the Chinese damage.
The idea that the US needed to take full responsibility was repeated, including by then Chinese leader
and chief toad Jiang Zemin.
Jiang also said the Chinese government had “sufficient evidence” that it was America’s
fault.
And Jiang also accused the US of violating Chinese airspace.
It’s not clear what evidence that the Chinese Communist Party had, because they never released
any.
Meanwhile, the US government initially didn’t assign any blame.
But as the Chinese Communist Party continued with its propaganda offensive, including suggesting
that the US would need to apologize before China would release the American crew members,
the US government began to change tactics.
The Department of Defense released a video showing the pilot Wang Wei getting dangerously
close to another US plane in January 2001.
That’s the footage you saw earlier.
The US also released a photo showing Wang Wei flying close to a US plane and holding
up his email address.
You can’t quite make it out in the photo, but I’m guessing it was an AOL.com address.
But basically, the US was showing Wang Wei was a reckless pilot who had a history of
showboating and harassing US planes.
That’s something the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want to get out, since they were
making Wang into a martyr, including awarding him the title of Guardian of the Territorial
Airspace and Waters.
After days of tense negotiations, the US ambassador to China issued what became known as the Letter
of Two Sorries.
The letter expressed sincere regret over China’s missing pilot and said that the
US was sorry for their loss.
It also said the US was “very sorry the entering of China’s airspace and landing
did not have verbal clearance.”
Keep in mind, this US reconnaissance plane—or what Chinese propaganda would like you to
remember as the “spy plane”—was flying over international waters when it was hit.
It only entered Chinese airspace to make the emergency landing.
But Chinese regime took this as the US apologizing for the incident.
The US maintained that the letter expressed the Bush administration’s regret and sorrow,
but it was absolutely not an apology.
Diplomacy: The art of purposeful ambiguity so that both sides can say they won.
But what happened to the American crew?
And what happened to the plane with sensitive technology on board?
I’ll tell you after the break.
Welcome back.
The US sent China a letter of regret about the collision.
And afterwards, China released the 24 American crewmembers.
They flew back to the US 10 days after their emergency landing.
And the US reconnaissance plane was eventually dismantled and returned to the US three months
later.
The US also paid China more than 30,000 dollars to cover the costs of housing the American
plane crew.
Which the Chinese regime claimed was compensation for the crash.
After the Americans were safely home, the Bush administration was more direct about
blaming the Chinese pilot for the collision.
But the damage was already done.
The Chinese Communist Party’s narrative, that it was America’s fault, was here to
stay.
In the aftermath of the incident, it was clear that the Chinese Communist Party was able
to learn quite a bit of classified intel from the US plane.
Although the EP-3’s crew tried to destroy as much classified information as they could,
including by smashing computers, they weren’t able to do so completely.
It’s even possible that the Communist Party was able to reverse engineer the plane’s
operating system.
“Mastering it would give China a road map for decrypting the Navy’s classified intelligence
and operational data.”
In 2008, an unrelated incident showed this data breach might have happened.
So the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars replacing all of the
similar operating systems in the Navy.
The Chinese regime also learned secret information involving what the US knew about the PLA.
For example, that the US had been able to locate and collect signal transmissions associated
with Chinese submarines.
And now, 20 years later, the Chinese Communist Party is still using the Hainan Island incident
as propaganda.
In fact, they’re practically celebrating it.
As they launch drills in the South China Sea.
Here’s a photo of the pilot Wang Wei’s memorial.
Someone placed a basket of flowers with a photo of Chinese Communist Party official
Yang Jiechi lecturing US officials during the Alaska meeting a few weeks ago.
The message is clearly that China is a lot stronger than it was 20 years ago, and now
it’s a match for the US.
And the Chinese Communist Party is of course sticking with their propaganda narrative that
it was the US plane’s fault.
“The US reconnaissance plane made a sudden wide turn, crashing into the Chinese plane.”
That’s from a state-run media video that uses the Hainan Island incident to brag about
how advanced China’s military is now.
But as advanced as the PLA is, it doesn’t mean they’ve stopped flying dangerously
aroundUS planes.
Which means that there could still be another Hainan Island incident today.
As if there aren’t already enough flash points in the South China Sea.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from one of you, a fan who supports China
Uncensored on the crowdfunding website Patreon.
Banana Pancakes asks: So how far will this nationalistic fervour
continue in China?
Will people go start burning down factories?
At this point they might as well so that factory owners can claim their insurance coverage.
That’s in reference to our episode about China boycotting foreign brands like H&M and
Nike because they refuse to use Xinjiang cotton, a.k.a. cotton that is likely made from slave
labor.
Well Banana Pancakes, the truth is that the nationalistic fervor will continue as long
as it’s useful for the Chinese Communist Party.
They’ve gotten really good at being able to gin up the outrage when they need it, but
also keep it from going too far and out of control, thanks to the magic of Internet censorship.
And a mass surveillance state.
And a huge propaganda apparatus.
You get the picture.
Burning down factories would be going too far.
Because then it would make China look bad.
Just like the anti-Japanese protests back in 2012, that turned into people burning Japanese
cars and causing over a hundred million dollars in damage.
Plus, there’s always the possibility that if you let people protest too much about one
thing, they could start protesting about other things, or even worse, protesting against
the Chinese Communist Party.
So they’re not going to let that happen.
Thanks for your question, Banana Pancakes.
Be like Banana Pancakes.
Go to patreon.com/ChinaUncensored and support the show for as little as a dollar an episode.
And I could answer your question, too.
And thank you for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
I’ll see you on our Geocities page.