‘Unreported’ US-China military encounters cloud risk assessment: analyst
- Incidents set to continue amid lack of direct communication, China’s ambitions and US reluctance to pull back, observers say
- PLA pilots are becoming ‘more proficient’ but operator error still a danger, they say
Increasingly frequent encounters between the Chinese and US warships and military aircraft are difficult to analyse because some of them are not reported, a US military analyst said on Wednesday.
“Part of the challenge of talking about [US-China military incidents] is that a lot of encounters go unreported,” Josiah Case, a research analyst at the Centre for Naval Analyses, said at an event held on Wednesday by the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank.
“That’s why it’s hard to say that there is a clear trend line other than what we’ve been told by [Pentagon] officials in public.
“I think part of why what we’re seeing today is so worrying is that these are happening in a vacuum.”
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Chinese fighter jet almost collides with US military plane over South China Sea
Encounters between patrolling Chinese and American vessels and aircraft have become increasingly dangerous, US officials have said, because of a lack of high-level communication between the two militaries. Beijing cut several communication channels after former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August.