HONOLULU -- The release of the crew of the American EP-3E reconnaissance plane from Chinese "protective custody" may have defused the crisis but hardly represents the end of this affair. Meetings are now under way between U.S. and Chinese officials to deal with the aftereffects. While both sides agree that much remains to be resolved, each sees the problem differently.
From a U.S. perspective, issue No. 1 is the return of the plane and its sophisticated intelligence-collection hardware, followed closely by Chinese agreement to abide by the "rules of the road" regarding intercept procedures against reconnaissance aircraft operating over international waters, to reduce the prospects of future incidents. Even before the accident, the United States had been complaining about increasingly aggressive Chinese intercept techniques (which appear to be the most probably direct cause of the April 1 midair collision). The U.S. would no doubt also like to reach some agreement with the Chinese over the cause of the accident but this appears impossible, given that Beijing has already anointed its ill-fated pilot, Wang Wei, as a "revolutionary martyr." As a result, the prospect of China's acknowledging that its pilot was even partially, much less principally, to blame seems remote.
Meanwhile, unless Beijing can release convincing evidence to the contrary, there is no reason not to believe the American pilot's version of the story, which has the Chinese F-8 accidentally colliding with the EP-3E during its third close pass by the American plane, as the EP-3E was flying straight and level on autopilot. Even if the U.S. Navy plane had been making a turn, as the Chinese allege, this should not have been a problem unless the Chinese pilot was flying too close and behaving too aggressively.