All the information that I’ve come into
contact with, publicly available and un-, say that government officials are no
better than we are at determining the level at which decisions regarding the
lock-on of PLA Navy fire-control radars on Japanese MSDF assets. Jacey, who obviously knows military
radars, provides
a comment, where he guesstimates that it could have been accidental.
It’s hard to tell one way or other because
top Chinese officials give short shrift to the media except in rare, highly
stage-managed doses (although Uncle Wen made an effort to be more forthcoming).
Still, it’s striking that the foreign and defense ministry have left all the
talking on the substance of the issue—did they or didn’t they?—to the defense
ministry foreign spokesperson. We haven’t even heard from their foreign and
defense ministers, and they are at best the equivalent of our vice ministers
and deputy secretaries, outranked administratively by the respective competent
members of the State Council, who in turn serve at the pleasure of the
Communist Party’s Politburo and its Standing Committee. Then there are the
central military committees of the CCP and the government. Contrast that with
Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera
man the frontlines of the public communications war. It keeps Chinese officials
from straying off the reservation in public view, but the asymmetry—partly attributable
in the immediate instance to the difference between offense (Japan!) and
defense (China) but ultimately traceable to the difference between an
authoritarian regime and a liberal democracy—can’t be helpful in finding a
mutual landing point going forward.
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