China's not-so-blue skies were the primary topic of conversation during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's recent trip to East Asia. The issue, of course, was not climate change but Beijing's declaration last month of a new air defense identification zone that requires aircraft flying through the area to identify themselves and to file a flight plan.
Although the declaration of such zones is the sovereign right of states, the international norm is that countries do not unilaterally declare zones that overlap with other countries' airspace and with disputed territory.
In this case, China did both. Half of its new zone duplicates Japan's over the disputed territory of a Japanese-owned island chain (which the Japanese call Senkakus and the Chinese call Diaoyu). The Chinese also declared control of airspace over a piece of South Korean-claimed territory that includes an oceanic research lab. Biden's uncharacteristically stern and sober press availability after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week gave a sense of how hard the United States and Japan have pushed back against China's attempt to expand its footprint.