Still, both in its more aggressive response to U.S. patrols around its airspace and in its detention of the downed surveillance plane, China or at least some hawkish elements in the Chinese leadership appear set on playing hard ball. Although China's announcement Monday that it would grant the U.S. access to the detained personnel appeared to signal that there are limits as to how far Beijing wants to push President Bush into a crisis, the fact that Chinese sources reported that the plane had been boarded in defiance of the U.S. insistence that it is sovereign territory suggests a more provocative stance.
The air crash in the South China Sea couldn't have come at a worse time for the President, precisely because relations between Washington and Beijing have been deteriorating over the U.S. plan to build a national missile defense system and, more immediately, its proposed sale of destroyers equipped with the sophisticated Aegis anti-missile system to Taiwan. Comments by Bush administration hawks most notably Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's recommendation that containing China become the strategic focus of U.S. military doctrine have done little to sweeten the atmosphere in which U.S. diplomats must now persuade their Chinese counterparts to hand back the crew and the plane. Taking a look around the plane will certainly be tempting to the Chinese military, since the EP-3 is on Taiwan's shopping list.
Recent history and the events since the U.S. plane landed in China suggest, the standoff, and its repercussions, won't be quickly resolved. The plane crash is quickly shaping up as the most serious international challenge to have confronted President Bush precisely because it comes on the eve of his decision over whether to sell the Aegis-equipped vessels to Taiwan. Administration officials had previously expressed concern that Beijing had turned the issue into a test of manhood, thereby limiting both sides' room for maneuver; the standoff over the crashed airplane is likely only to raise the stakes.