Following the release by Beijing of the crew of a damaged U.S. spy plane, Washington has asserted its determination to continue its massive military pressure on China. According to a April 17 report in the Washington Post, Pentagon officials said the Bush administration "is considering sending an aircraft carrier or an Aegis radar-equipped warship to the South China Sea to ensure the safety of continued U.S. surveillance flights off the coast of China."

U.S. government officials and the big-business media have also gone on a propaganda offensive to shift the blame onto Beijing for the collision, accusing its pilots of "recklessness" and causing the crash in which a Chinese pilot was killed. "It is clear that the [Chinese] pilot intended to harass the crew," claimed U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in seeking to absolve Washington of responsibility for its repeated and provocative flights on China's border, two days after the crew was released.

U.S. president George Bush has justified the spying missions, what he calls "reconnaissance flights," as "part of a comprehensive national security strategy that helps maintain peace and stability in our world." Bush "is not likely" to make any decision on the surveillance flights "until after American military officials meet with Chinese officials in Beijing" on April 18, the New York Times reported.

The eight-member U.S. delegation preparing for the meeting in China will be dominated by military officials, including officers from the Pacific Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Navy, and the State Department. At the talks they will demand the return of the Navy spy plane being held at the Chinese military airfield on Hainan Island. "The EP-3 aircraft is United States property. It was worth in excess of $80 million," Rumsfeld snapped. "That subject will be front and center at the April 18 meetings, just as it has been every single day since the crew landed in China."

The Bush administration has already dismissed Beijing's demand to end the U.S. surveillance flights near its coasts.

'We're going to keep doing it'

Pentagon officials said the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff planned a meeting for April 17 to discuss how to resume the spy flights. "We're going to keep doing it," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a senior Pentagon spokesman. "But...we're not going to announce the schedule or the details how."

The Pentagon has downplayed an April 16 report by the Washington Post stating that the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier that carries 70 fighter jets and is accompanied by several other warships, was sailing toward the South China Sea. The Post article said the ship could be ordered to the region where it could "protect the U.S. reconnaissance flights," which could resume the day after the meeting in Beijing. And "depending on the Chinese reaction, the addition of U.S. warplanes to the mix could lead to new confrontations."

An unnamed Pentagon official who denied the report told Reuters, "Of course anything can happen. But there are just no plans to put that carrier in the South China Sea."

The Pentagon considered and began preparing for an assault using "special forces commando units in Japan" to rescue the crew detained for 11 days on Hainan, wrote Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz. "Every night--the best time for such raids--the Chinese are placing concrete barriers at either end of the damaged EP-3E aircraft just in case U.S. commandos attack and try to get the intelligence-gathering plane out of the country," Gertz wrote in his "Notes from the Pentagon" column.

A number of rightists and former Republican administration officials have harshly criticized the Bush administration over its handling of the conflict with Beijing. In a four-page editorial that hit the newsstands two days before the crew was released, the conservative Weekly Standard magazine said the White House has brought "national humiliation...upon the United States" by making an "apology" to China. "Even expressing 'regret' would make Bush look like he was afraid and caving to Chinese pressure," stated William Kristol and Robert Kagan, who coauthored the editorial.

In China, the government has sought to suppress outrage of millions of workers, peasants, and students opposed to the U.S. spy flights. The regime barred anti-American protests and posters, but many Internet users in China managed to express their anger at the Chinese government before their comments were quickly removed. According to a number of press reports, remarks like "our government is too weak; we have lost face," and "this shows the Chinese government is incompetent" were reflective of a large number of messages.

Meanwhile, the U.S. big business media's anti-China propaganda has fueled racist caricatures and stereotypes of Chinese people. At a recent convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a white man performed in a skit dressed in a black wig and thick glasses, impersonating a Chinese official who gestured wildly as he said, "ching, ching, chong, chong." The room full of top editors, predominantly whites, "laughed heartily," wrote Marsha Ginsberg of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Calls for internment of Chinese

Philip Ting, president of the Organization of Chinese Americans in San Francisco, said radio commentators throughout the United States have called for Chinese American internment. "Xenophobic climates lead to persecution, hate crimes, and murder," he wrote to a radio station in the Bay Area that performed a reactionary spoof of the spy plane conflict.

In the Bay Area, where Asian Americans are 20 percent of the population, more than 90 percent of the callers into two popular Chinese-language radio and television programs expressed opposition to Washington's aggressive actions against China.

Response in United States

"Many Chinese Americans have grown skeptical of the U.S. government, particularly after its investigation of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was accused of spying for China," Mei Ling Sze, news director for KTSF-TV 26, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Lee, who was indicted on 59 counts of espionage and held in solitary confinement, was released after the FBI's case collapsed with no evidence of him committing any crime.

The FBI has begun a new probe against the rights of Chinese people living in the United States, claiming that a "pro-China" group called "Hacker Union of China" may have been responsible for attacking U.S. government and business web sites. "All we are aware of is an intrusion emanating from abroad. We are coordinating with appropriate government agencies," said FBI spokesperson Debbie Weierman.

Washington's escalation of tensions with Beijing points to its long-term goal of overturning the social conquests of the 1949 revolution in China, in which workers and peasants overthrew the landlord-capitalist regime and through massive mobilizations carried out deep-going land reform, established nationalized property relations, state monopoly of foreign trade, and the degree of economic planning that still dominates society there.

Despite its drive by the bureaucratic regime in China to integrate the country into the world capitalist market, the U.S. rulers will not reconcile themselves to the social relations there, which puts them on a collision course with the workers and peasants in the region. Washington's military pressure on China and neighboring north Korea involves an arsenal of nuclear weapons, naval and air forces, and some 300,000 troops in the U.S. Pacific Command, which includes nearly 60,000 stationed in and near Japan, and 37,000 in south Korea.

The U.S. military encirclement of China also includes support to the government in Taiwan and an effective drifting away from recognizing China's sovereignty over the territory. The Washington Post reported that one move contemplated by Washington is "granting visas to prominent Taiwanese politicians to visit or transit in the United States," a move that would be vigorously opposed by China. The U.S. government pledged to downgrade official relations with Taiwan when it established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.

In addition, Washington intends to increase advanced weapons available to Taiwan, including sales of submarines, antisubmarine planes, and Kidd-class destroyers. Plans to arm Taiwan with advanced destroyers equipped with an antimissile system are still on the table.

With the backing of Washington, the capitalist governments in Taiwan and the Philippines have stepped up pressure on China. According to the Reuters news agency, on April 16 Taiwan's president requested the U.S. government provide the regime with more weapons.

That same day the government in the Philippines announced it ordered its air force to "investigate" reports that the Chinese government has built shelters for fishermen on Mischief Reef in the Spratly islands, a cluster of potentially oil-rich isles, reefs, and shoals. Beijing claims sovereignty over the Spratlys, which are also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei.

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