China told its military personnel “not to fire the first shot” as Beijing looks to de-escalate tensions with the United States in the South China Sea, the South China Morning Post reported. Relations between both the sides have been strained due to issues including China’s claim on the South China Sea, the US renewing relations with Taiwan, US imposing sanctions on China for the latter imposing the national security law on Hong Kong and China’s transparency over the origin of the coronavirus.
Both the US and China stepped up their operations in the disputed South China Sea, which could increase chances of incidents that could spiral out of control. Beijing does not want to give American hawks the opportunity to escalate things further.
As per sources, pilots and naval officers have been asked to exercise restraint in the stand-off with US planes and warships. In the meantime, there have been phone conversations between defence ministers of the two nations.
One source close to the military also said Beijing had communicated through “various channels” to the US that it had told its military “never to fire first” in a goodwill gesture to keep the situation under control.
The source further added that the PLA was a “different military force” from 2001 – a reference to the Hainan incident when a US intelligence aircraft collided with a PLA fighter jet. Chinese pilot Wang Wei lost his life in the collision and the US plane was forced to land on Hainan island. The crewmen were eventually released after the US issued a carefully worded statement on the incident. “Today, the PLA has developed many countermeasures. The Americans won’t be able to return in one piece if such an accident ever happens again,” he added.
China and the US, in 1998, had established the military maritime consultative agreement to avoid accidents during close encounters. In 2014 they agreed on an initiative to notify each other of major military operations and a code of conduct for naval and military encounters.
Dispute with the other South China Sea claimants and accused it of seeking to drive a wedge between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
