China-US: "At the end of Trump's presidency, the two countries are one step away from confrontation"

China and the United States came close to military confrontation in the early days of 2021, when Washington had to destroy its floating sonars in the South China Sea to prevent them from falling into Beijing's hands. This was revealed for the first time by a team of scientists from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) electronic warfare unit in a report published for the first time by the journal "Electronic countermeasures on board" and relaunched today by the Hong Kong newspaper " South China Morning Post".

The episode dates back to January 5, 2021, a day before the assault by supporters of then President Donald Trump in the United States Congress. An anti-submarine aircraft of the US Air Force flew over the South China Sea at an unusual distance from the Chinese coast, just 150 kilometers from Hong Kong. Beijing's armed forces, which were conducting a naval exercise in the area that day, quickly responded by taking off a number of planes that currently remain classified. According to the reconstruction of the Chinese report, however, the two sides came close to confrontation and the United States was forced to destroy its floating sonars to prevent them from ending up in Chinese hands.

The sensors had been placed by US spy planes in the waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha to the Chinese), a group of atolls and reefs currently controlled by Taiwan but claimed by Beijing. China, underlines the "South China Morning Post", would have considered any military activity in the Pratas area as an attempt by the United States to deliberately fuel tensions in the region. On January 8, three days after the incident, the US military's joint chief of staff, General Mark Milley, telephoned his counterpart Li Zuocheng to defuse tensions between the two sides. Subsequently, in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Milley allegedly said that the United States had intelligence information that China was concerned about the possibility of a US attack and that the telephone conversation served to "avoid a war between nuclear superpowers”.

According to the report by the Chinese military's electronic warfare unit, the episode was part of the growing efforts made by the United States in recent years to trace China's submarine activities, which have recently intensified especially in the South China Sea. According to the scientists, the technologies used by the US pose "a serious threat" to Chinese submarines and make it very difficult for them to operate in the region without being tracked.