Australia yesterday said that its patrol plane was in international airspace when a Chinese warplane intercepted it and released a cloud of small aluminium strips, known as chaff.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded curtly when asked about a spat between Canberra and Beijing over the May 26 incident, which Australia’s government has described as “very dangerous.”
“This incident occurred in international airspace. Full stop,” Albanese told a news conference.
Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Tan Kefei (譚克非) on Tuesday said that the Australian P-8A aircraft came near the airspace of the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan also claims.
The Chinese side “issued a warning to drive it away,” Tan said.
He accused the Australian plane of threatening China’s sovereignty and security, and Canberra of spreading “false information.”
Australia says that the Chinese plane cut in front of its patrol aircraft and released chaff, some of which was ingested into its engines.
Chaff is designed to confuse radar-guided missiles.
Speculation of a thaw in frosty relations between Australia and China after Albanese’s Labor Party won elections on May 21 has been short-lived.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) sent his congratulations a few days after Albanese’s win, but the two countries have since sparred over the jet incident, and their rival diplomatic and security ambitions in the South Pacific region.
Relations between them have soured in the past two years after Canberra called for an independent probe into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and banned China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) from building Australia’s 5G network.
China — Australia’s biggest trading partner — responded by imposing tariffs or disrupting more than a dozen key industries, including wine, barley and coal.
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