Overseas Chinese residing in the US and Americans of Chinese origin yesterday noted that the US should bear full responsibility for the collision between an American spy plane and Chinese fighter.
Forty representatives of overseas Chinese expressed their views on this incident in a forum held by the New York Federation of Overseas Chinese Organizations.
They pointed out that, from the view of international law, the US is held fully responsible for the collision. The US should apologize to the Chinese people and stop all military surveillance activities on China.
It is a provocative act in violation of international law that US plane conducted spy activities off China's coastal area and intruded into China's airspace without permission, according to Ren Jiewen, secretary-general of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce of the United States.
US should explain in explicit terms why its military plane flew close to China's airspace for spy activities, he said, adding that it must bear all the political and economic consequences arising thereafter.
Huang Keqiang, chairman of the US Lin Zexu Fund, said that, as the old saying goes that do as you would be done by others. If Chinese military planes fly over the airspace of the US, the US is also believed to react strongly.
Liang Guanjun, chairman of the New York Federation of Overseas Chinese Organizations, noted that the fact that a US spy plane bumped into a Chinese fighter to cause to crash is a serious incident.
He also expressed the hope that US should take the incident seriously, and cooperate with the Chinese side in resolving the issue properly, in order not to adversely affect bilateral relations.
(Xinhua 04/05/2001)
