Exclusive: China warns U.S. surveillance plane

Above the South China Sea (CNN)The Chinese navy issued warnings eight times as a U.S. surveillance plane on Wednesday swooped over islands that Beijing is using to extend its zone of influence.

Seeking to further challenge China's military build-up in the South China Sea, the plane conducted a reconnaissance mission over a contested military installation being constructed on a manmade series of islands.

A CNN team was given exclusive access to fly onboard the P8-A Poseidon, America's most advanced surveillance and submarine-hunting aircraft, as it flew over the islands.

The U.S. is considering flying such surveillance missions even closer over the islands and sailing U.S. warships within miles of them as part of a new, more robust U.S. military response to make clear the U.S. does not recognize China's territorial claims.

This is the first time the U.S. has allowed journalists on board an operational mission of the P8 over the contested waters, and the first time it has declassified video of China's building activity and audio of Chinese challenges of a U.S. aircraft.

In response to the American surveillance presence, a voice in English could be heard crackling through the radio of the aircraft in which CNN was present.

"This is the Chinese navy ... This is the Chinese navy ... Please go away ... to avoid misunderstanding," said a voice in English.

This is stupid. Obama will end up creating an incident over a bunch of islands that are largely irrelevant to US interests.

Ahem. Actually, this is something to us.

The Chinese have decreed, on their own motion, that they own not only the entire continental shelf underlying the South and East China Seas (the Nine-Dash Line), but also the water column above it. This claim sweeps in fantastic mineral resources (oil, for one thing) and it closely circumscribes the territorial waters and economic zones of several of China's neighbors.

Japan, for instance, would be (won't be) reduced to the 3-mile limit around the islands of the Nansei Shoto (the Ryukyus but not the Senkakus), and China would appropriate to herself as part of her own economic exclusive zone, the Japanese shelf and slope, all the way down to the bottom of the Japan Trench, quite some distance east of the Ryukyus and the Home Islands of Kyushu and Honshu.

So yeah, it's something to us.

But wait, there's more. China has semiofficially promulgated, in a CPC newspaper, a new doctrine in the Pacific Ocean, under which the United States Fleet will be excluded from the western Pacific (WESTPAC to three generations of U.S. sailors and Marines), but China in her native generosity and goodwill toward others will be willing to "share" the central Pacific with America. The Central Pacific includes Midway, Hawaii, and the Aleutians.

Just the other day, moreover, the Chinese made an official reference to this policy as well, so that is is alive and kicking, not a deflated trial balloon. This Chinese conception of the Law of Nations would supplant Admiralty Law completely, and overwrite 500 years of international sea law. Moreover, it would establish a new "rule about rules": China makes the rules. So yes, that's something to us.

Oh, and did I mention that the Chinese are running the Panama Canal these days? And yes, that's something to us, too.

flatten? Well, remember Bimini? that’s flatten!

You mean Bikini. Bimini is just a couple hours' cruising off Miami Beach.

We didn't just "flatten" Bikini. We turned one island into a crater 250' deep and oh, half a mile in diameter (that was a 16-megaton shot that, ummm, overachieved in a classic "oops" he-blew-up-the-basement fashion), and we littered the bottom of the lagoon with surplus US and surrendered Japanese and German warships.

(The German cruiser Prinz Eugen, an American war prize, is upside down at the bottom of another lagoon --Kwajalein or Eniwetok, I can't remember which. A no-dive zone, btw, because her magazines are still fully loaded with German naval ordnance which, last time anyone checked, generally worked pretty well.)

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