A Controversial Cross-Straits Flight Route Rekindles Concerns
Covering Chinese chatters (discourses, narratives, policies and rhetoric) on external events and actors, military and security issues, and India.
Worldview Weekly: China’s ‘Unilateral’ M503 Decision Draws Taiwan’s Ire
By Anushka Saxena
On January 30, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announced that beginning February 1, the flight offset measures for the northbound operation of the M503 route will be cancelled. Subsequently, the CAAC will also implement flight routes M503 W122 and W123, connecting from west to east, to improve airspace operational efficiency (自2月1日起取消M503航线自北向南运行的飞行偏置措施。后续,民航局还将启用M503航线W122、W123衔接航线由西向东运行,提升空域运行效率).
The changing of the dynamics of this civilian flight route are a regular affair in the run up to the Lunar New Year, when many of the native Taiwanese entrepreneurs doing business out of the mainland visit home for celebrations, and there is extensive air traffic exiting the mainland and heading to Taiwan. This year too, with the Lunar New Year which falls on February 10, approaching, China has announced that the north-south offset of the M503 route will be closed to ease air traffic, and the east west offsets, the W-121, 122 and 123, will become operational (to understand the offsets, please refer to the graphic below).
This graphic explains the two ways in which the M503 route is used. First is the north-south offset of the route, which runs almost parallely to the median line of the Straits, at a distance of about 11 kilometers (or 6 nautical miles). This is the adjusted distance, separate from the initially planned route at a distance of about 7.4 kilometers (4.2 nautical miles) from the median line.
Second is the three east-west offsets of the route, namely the W121 from Dongshan, the W122 from Fuzhou and the W123 from Xiamen, which connect these three hubs of East China’s Fujian Province with the M503.
Why this is a controversial route and decision, is because of three factors:
The closeness of the route to the median line of Taiwan’s Air-Defense Identification Zone, which is also considered the median line in the Taiwan Straits and therefore, a de-facto maritime border between the two sides;
The fact that since 2018, Chinese flights operating on this route have been doing so with unilateral permission from the CAAC on the mainland, without the government being in consultations with Taiwanese authorities; and
Flowing from point 2, despite continued protests from Taiwan surrounding the pressure China’s unilateral decisions exert on the island’s air defence systems and interfere with the ADIZ training routes of the ROC Air Force (ROCAF), China has repeatedly ignored Taiwan’s protests and politicised cross-straits travel (as usual).
All of this is also exacerbated by heightened sortie activities of Chinese fighter jets, UAVs, and balloons, that have been frequenting the airspace beyond the median line of Taiwan’s ADIZ in huge numbers in the past two years. At a time when Taiwan’s air force is already at high alert, civilian flight diversions close to the M503 can enhance collision risk and require greater communication between the two sides, which, today, is not the case.
A Brief History
Before the M503 was operationalised, about 1,200 daily flights used the airspace over the A470 route along the Eastern coast of mainland China. This was a cause of great trouble vis-a-vis air congestion and collision risks.
Even though the M503 route was meant to start up in March 2015 and direct cross-straits flights had started even back in 2009, under the-then Taiwanese President Ma Ying-Jeou, who belonged to the KMT, relations with Beijing were relatively stable. So Taiwan was able to talk its way through the potential concerns surrounding the M503, under provisions of the communication clause in the 2009 Supplementary Agreement on Cross-Strait Air Transportation.
However, on January 4, 2018, again just weeks before the Lunar New Year, China announced a unilateral decision to kick off the M503’s north-south offset, in a bid to reduce frequent delays faced by flights from China and ease flight congestion. Even at this time, flights using the M503 flew to places like Hong Kong, Macau and other locations in South/ Southeast Asia, and not across the median line to Taiwan. At the time, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council made a statement, arguing the following:
The south to north operation of the M503 flight route from January 4, 2018, involves no Taiwan flight route or destination and will not affect Taiwan flight safety.
The M503 flight route is located close to the mainland in the Taiwan Strait and in the Shanghai Flight Information Region (the territorial airspace and the airspace over the high seas around Shanghai; has been established with consideration to smooth and safe air traffic flow). The establishment and operation of the M503 route is routine work for the mainland’s civil aviation authorities.
Figures from 2017 showed that flight from Hong Kong to Pudong of Shanghai was delayed at an average of 103 minutes, the delay being up 5.1 percent year-on-year. The average on-schedule rate of the airway was also only 46 percent.
Of course, Ma also said that Chinese didn’t need permission from Taiwan to launch flights on this route.
Taiwan Responds
But because the fact remained that the 2018 move by the CAAC was made without consultation with Taiwanese authorities, they responded. For example, they first blocked Chinese airlines’ applications for additional charter flights on the occasion of the Lunar New Year. Subsequently, on January 30, 2018, the affected airlines announced that they would no longer wait for a decision from Taiwan and cancelled 176 charter flights, leaving 50,000 passengers stranded on the mainland, while re-burdening the A470.
These actions also had economic consequences for Taipei, because, in addition to Taiwanese businessmen remaining stranded on the mainland, according to a report KMT News published that year, while cross-Strait flights accounted for only 1-2% of the revenue for Mainland airlines, for Taiwanese airlines, they accounted for 10-20%.
This time, too, retorting to the CAAC announcement from January 30, the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense has said:
In response to the Chinese Communist Party's announcement of the cancellation of measures such as the flight offset for the M503 route, the Ministry of National Defense today stated that the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait are crucial to the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region and are a shared responsibility of all parties in the region. The unilateral and arrogant actions of the Chinese Communist Party are highly likely to escalate tensions, impact the current security and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and the Beijing authorities should take responsibility and immediately cease such actions.
The Ministry of National Defense emphasized that the armed forces are prepared for war without seeking it and will not shy away from it when necessary. They will utilize joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance means to continuously monitor and grasp the dynamics of the sea and airspace around the Taiwan Strait. In response to changes in the threat situation, appropriate alert levels and public announcements will be made, and measures to issue warnings will be taken. Regarding unidentified aircraft entering our airspace identification zone, they will be dealt with according to operational procedures and emergency handling regulations to ensure the safety of our airspace.
The development has clear implications for airspace security, contrary to what the Chinese would have one believe. Arbitrary changes in air routes that where civilian and military aircraft movement coincides, without communication and consultation about flight paths and timings, have a potential to cause collisions, or last minute diversions and cancellations. The previous few years have seen similar changes in M503 routes close to the Lunar New Year holidays, resulting in mass cancellations and trade route congestion. For Taiwan’s new President William Lai, getting China to negotiate will be an even bigger challenge.
Guarding the Great Wall: Some more thoughts on the ‘Chinese Anti-Terrorism Legal System and Practice’ White Paper
By Anushka Saxena
In our previous edition of ‘Eye on China’, we did a breakdown of the White Paper on China’s Anti-Terrorism Legal System and Practice (中国的反恐怖主义法律制度体系与实践) released by the Chinese State Council Information Office on January 23, 2024.
Reading between the lines, the Paper sheds light on the key issues plaguing Chinese law enforcement and judicial agencies overall, with counterterrorism as an example.
With the promulgation of any legislation in the Chinese system, abstraction in the language leaves much wiggle room for interpretation by local authorities. Sometimes, these interpretations can lead to drastic measures, which are motivated by political goals such as being noticed by higher-ups, or creating a legacy associated with a particular policy campaign.
This has been the case with local law enforcement in Xinjiang. As per Article 9(7) of the 2017 Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) Regulations on De-Radicalisation, for example, wearing face-covering burqas is considered to be a symbol of extremism. This can be interpreted as expanding the scope of prohibition on wearing burqas from public to even private spaces and homes.
Subsequently, implementation of the Regulations by local officials has seen the creation of detailed records of neighbours and friends of targets who may potentially wear burqas inside homes, and the use of such records to seek private information. Particularly under XUAR Party Committee Secretary Chen Quanguo, in 2016 and 2017, local authorities were even encouraged to detain individuals without charges. But the interesting bit is that these officials are rarely sanctioned for their overreach. Instead, Chen Quanguo was promoted to member of the 19th Politburo of the CPC.
It is in this light that the White Paper may carry some learnings for cadres on conducting counterterrorism work in specific and law enforcement work in general.
First, the Paper stipulates that when public security organs are filing cases, any improper work in documentation would mean that public security organs would have to withdraw the case, and people’s procuratorates would have to ensure such a withdrawal goes through.
Secondly, it argues that in the collection and retrieval of evidence, public security organs are required to collect evidence both favourable and unfavourable to the suspect, and there is no scope for the use of illegal methods such as torture to obtain evidence.
After all this, if the case does indeed go to trial, the Paper mandates that people’s courts must render acquittals for cases with insufficient evidence or those that do not constitute crimes. At the outset, the hope with this third step seems to be to make the evidence collection and presentation process infallible, lest public security organs or people’s procuratorates fail to secure a conviction.
And of course, the onus of delivering flawless convictions is left to the people’s courts, and they are accountable to the NPC and the CPPCC.
The caveat, again, is that Chinese criminal law on sensitive issues like terrorism has demonstrably not functioned in this way and will not function in this way. The system is opaque enough for this to make no meaningful difference, and reeks of propaganda. In fact, little evidence exists that the NPC has conducted a serious review of court decisions or undertaken any punitive measures against lack of due diligence.
Of course, challenges persist in the implementation of such reforms pertaining to due process. For example, procuratorates and courts in China face extreme fiscal pressures. This is despite judicial reforms being underway since 2013 to centralise the budgetary processes of these authorities to relieve them of political influence attached to the funding from provincial governments.
Because these authorities are motivated to secure as much funding as possible from both the central and provincial governments, ground reality post-reforms suggests that even though much of the budget of procuratorates and courts is approved by the Ministry of Finance at the highest level, staff benefits and hiring of judicial clerks are still taken care of by provincial authorities, making personnel susceptible to both corruption and fiscal inefficiency, as well as to the whims of local politicians. This has hindered and will hinder the objectives of enhancing transparency and accountability for procuratorates and courts, and will exacerbate drastic local approaches to law enforcement to meet political goals.
Overall, a three-step roadmap for dealing with the challenges in China’s judicial reforms system emerges, one which is applicable to the apparatus as a whole and not just counterterrorism in specific.
The first step is the need to ensure transparency and accountability of relevant law enforcement and judicial organs to curtail political influence and abuse of power.
Step two is to make the requirements of due process so stringent, that to secure a conviction, local authorities will be required to implement central directives and perform procuratorial tasks with utmost care and without indulging in hedonism or overreach. On this, the White Paper has important suggestions.
Finally, step three would include eliminating vagueness in the law through standardisation of rules of procedures, enhanced central oversight by the NPC and the CPPCC, and the use of punitive measures against violations of the principles of this Paper, as well as previous regulations on the governance and reforms of the legal system.
Latest from the Indo-Pacific Studies Team:
Manoj Kewalramani, the Chairperson for IPSP, has authored a comprehensive Essay on “Examining GDI, GSI and GCI: China as a Rising Norm Entrepreneur,” for the ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institute.
From the Takshashila team - Saurabh Todi, a Research Analyst with the High Technology Geopolitics programme at the Institution, has authored for ‘Le Grand Continent’ a Commentary on ‘The future of the Sino-Indian Rivalry’ (Le futur de la rivalité sino-indienne).
The original piece is in French, and the English version is available on the Takshashila website - takshashila.org.in/blogs/the-future-of-the-sino-indian-rivalry.