China Releases the Crew

At least this won't be the start of WWIII.
Here is the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11CND-CHINA.html

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Sorry! I didn't know that it didn't work. hehe. I forgot that I had registered. here is a copy of the article:

U.S. Air Crew Departs China, Ending 11-day Standoff

By CRAIG S. SMITH

HAIKOU, China, Thursday, April 12 - Twenty-one men and three women boarded a Continental Airlines plane this morning for the first leg of their trip home, ending 11 days in Chinese custody that began when their spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet and made an emergency landing on Hainan island.

They lifted off at 7:29 a.m. from this city's Meilan-Haikou International Airport for Guam.

Word spread early Wednesday that the American crew would be released after journalists across the country who are mid-ranking Communist Party members and above were called to attend secret meetings at which they were ordered to stick to official New China News Agency accounts when reporting the news. The message, according to people who attended one meeting, was that America should be blamed for the incident and that the struggle would continue because the American surveillance aircraft will remain on Chinese soil.

The $100 million EP-3E Aries II, which was heavily damaged in the collision with the Chinese F-8 that was tailing it, is sitting on the airstrip where the American crew's pilot brought it to rest after a harrowing 15-minute ride that aviators describe as just short of miraculous.

The Chinese announced late Wednesday afternoon that the crew would be released, and broadcast the word nationally at about 7 p.m. The Continental plane that will bring the crew back left Guam this afternoon with a team of military officials. There were also doctors and psychologists on board who will conduct preliminary examinations of the crew. A chartered commercial airliner was used because the Chinese insisted that no military aircraft be used to pick up the crew, government officials said.

Once the plane returns to Guam, a military C-17 cargo aircraft is to take the crew to the Hickham Air Force Base near Honolulu. The Pentagon planned to keep the 24 crew members at Hickham for more thorough examinations and debriefings on the flight and the crew's detention.

The Pentagon hopes to learn more about the collision itself, the crew's success in destroying sensitive intelligence equipment and codes aboard and the degree to which the Chinese questioned the crew.

``It's like a crime scene,'' one government official said in Washington. ``You want access to them as quickly as possible while their memory is still fresh.''

President Bush himself ordered the crew members to be back home by Easter, forcing officials at the United States Pacific Command in Hawaii to curtail the crew's stay in Honolulu and prepare to fly the crew members more quickly, the officials said.

The decision to release the crew came after delivery of a diplomatic letter to China's Foreign Minister, Tang Jiaxuan, from United States Ambassador Joseph W. Prueher that contained carefully parsed words meant to allow both sides to claim victory in resolving the diplomatic impasse over the crew and plane. The letter was the culmination of more than a week of near round-the-clock negotiations between the two capitals during which both sides blamed the other. China demanded an apology and an admission of responsibility from the United States.

State media began preparing the nation for the crew members' release by announcing Tuesday evening that hope was dwindling that a maritime search here would turn up the missing pilot of the Chinese jet that crashed after the collision on April 1.

The search, already the largest and longest in Chinese naval history, has not been called off, however. As of Wednesday evening, 95 ships, 107 planes, more than 1,000 helicopters and 56,000 people were involved in the search for the pilot, Wang Wei, according to state media.

In the hours after the government's announcement, a crowd of 60 or 70 angry people gathered in a light rain across from the military hostel where the Americans were housed. Loud debates rose and fell among the crowd as they waited to see the Americans, whom many people blame for the loss of the Chinese pilot and see as representatives of American aggression.

``We're not satisfied,'' said a shirtless man who identified himself as Wang Min. People pressed around him agreed. Like many Chinese, he asked why the Americans should be allowed to go free if they were spying on China, as the media here has charged.

``America came and struck us on our doorstep, but we can't strike back,'' complained Mao Yunzao, 32, a laborer who spoke with the staccato accent of Mao Zedong's native Hunan province. ``If Mao were still around there'd be a war.''

One man at a sign shop opposite the hostel's gate wrote in large characters in red ink on a plywood board, ``We Oppose Hegemony, Give Us Back Wang Wei,'' a reference to the missing pilot. He carried it across the street and set it up in front of the hostel gate where a small crowd gathered around it before plainclothesmen carried the sign into the hostel compound.

Another sign bearing the same message, this time in black ink, was soon lifted above the crowd in front of the sign shop before a plainclothesman pulled it down, and another sign was soon made to replace it.

When asked if the sign makers weren't afraid of trouble with the police, one man replied, ``China is now a free country, we have human rights.''

But again a plainclothesman took the sign away and soon an official arrived to order all of the shops along the street to close and pull down their metal gates.

``The government should wait until we find Wang Wei before they let the Americans go,'' cried another man. When yet another called for America to pay damages, he shouted back, ``Compensation is no use. We lost a man. Can money repay the loss of a life?''

Zhao Ling, who owns a neighboring bar and who wrote one of the signs, drew applause from a small crowd when he declared, ``China is too tolerant of America.''

Shortly before dawn, the steel-bar gate to the small concrete compound opened to allow in a convoy that included two mini-buses with darken windows. About 5:45 a.m., the buses pulled out onto Airport Road, carrying the crewmembers.

A group of journalists keeping vigil across the road scrambled for taxis to follow the bus to the airport, where a Continental Micronesia jet was waiting to start the crew's journey home.

The crew were kept incommunicado for three days after their plane landed at a military base on the south end of Hainan Island. Finally, they were moved to the island's capital, Haikou, where they were allowed to meet for 40 minutes with two American officials, U.S. Army Brig. Gen Neal Sealock, the United States' defense attache in China, and Ted Gong, a senior consular official from Guangzhou.

The two officials met with some or all of the crew four more times over the following two weeks, providing them with underwear and books, snacks and e-mails from home while their detention ballooned into an international crisis between Washington and Beijing.



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