656 { China’s Quest
days, and the aircraft, which the Americans wanted to get back before PLA
analysts went through it methodically, for a far longer period.
The United States hinted at use of military force. Several destroyers sched-
uled to return to Pearl Harbor were ordered to delay their return and linger in
the region. The use of US military force to rescue the crew was not, however,
an attractive option. Even if such a rescue were to be successful in securing
the crewmen, the prospect of US military forces opening fire on PLA forces
on Chinese soil was too serious to contemplate. Resort to other forms of US
pressure—revocation of PNTR or vetoing the Beijing Olympics—could easily
sour the broader relation, making cooperation in other areas very difficult or
even impossible. The only realistic way Washington could secure the release
of the EP-3 and its crew was through negotiations and satisfaction of Beijing’s
minimal demands.
The EP-3 imbroglio became a very good lesson for the new US administra-
tion: leaders with responsibility for securing US interests often found it nec-
essary to secure China’s cooperation for various purposes. Without China’s
cooperation, US leaders would find many matters (such as securing the re-
lease of the American crew) much more difficult. It seems likely that Chinese
leaders understood that the collision was an accident (what airplane would
knowingly crash into another?), but decided for reasons of tactical, and per-
haps propaganda, advantage, to charge that the US pilot deliberately rammed
the Chinese fighter. That echoed the Chinese charges from the 1999 embassy
bombing, and would help put the Americans on the defensive.
Beijing’s insistence on an American apology, and US reluctance to deliver
one, quickly became the crux of the negotiations. On April 3, Ambassador
Yang Jiechi, in a speech in Washington, demanded that the US govern-
ment assume full responsibility for the incident and make an apology to
the Chinese government and people.^31 From the US perspective, an apology
was not merited, because it had been the Chinese F-8 that crashed into the
EP-3, not the other way around. The US insisted that the EP-3 had been flying
straight on autopilot when buzzed too closely by the PLA plane trying to ha-
rass the US craft. UNCLOS provided for overflight by military aircraft within
the 200-mile EEZ, the US contended, and the unauthorized EP-3 entry into
Chinese airspace and landing on Chinese territory was an emergency proce-
dure in accord with international law and practice. Yet the situation was that
unless the US apologized, the crew and the aircraft would not be released, or
so it seemed to US leaders.
On April 4, Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a letter to Qian Qichen
expressing his “regrets” for the death of the Chinese pilot. Qian replied that
this formulation was too limited; the US side should “examine the actual situ-
ation and adopt a realistic attitude, and apologize to the Chinese people”^32 The
next day President Bush for the first time expressed “regrets” for the loss of
the Chinese pilot. On April 8, Powell for the first time used the world “sorry,”