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3
4. (contd)
issued to the Canton authorities in a standard Notice to Airmen and the exercise vent off without any further difficulty.
5.
We should be interested in any comments or back- ground which you or Research Department can provide on the use of Pedro Blanco as a base point. For instance, is it normal to use islands which are themselves further off- shore than the claimed territorial limits (Pedro Blanco is about 18 nautical miles from the nearest point on the Chinese mainland and about 15 from a tiny unnamed rock in Hunghai Bay)? Even if the Chinese method for drawing their baselines is unusual, the point is academic as far as the problems raised by this exercise vere concerned: China regards all her islands as generating 12-mile territorial waters (see para 2 of Research Department's Note) and we assume that although it is tiny and un- inhabited there can be no question of disputing China's claim to Pedro Blanco.
6.
China's claim to Pedro Blanco would have unfortunate practical consequences for us if she were to insist there should be no overlying of her territorial waters in this area since the normal invard route to Hong Kong from the East for international air traffic (radaf CHO89 on the enclosed map not to copy addressees) lies orly 4 nautical miles from Pedro Blanco. llowever, these flights are generally at about 10,000 feet and there has been no indication that the Chinese intend to cause difficulties to normal air traffic in this area. Furthermore, all international flight paths to the West of Hong Kong pass within less than 12 nautical miles of Chinese islands many are indeed regularly overflow, though never below 4,500 ft - and the Chinese have never protested about this. For the moment we do not intend to make any changes to the present routes.
7.
we conclude that in this case it was only because low-level flights using military aircraft were involved that the Chinese felt bound to ask that the search and rescue area be moved. It is unlikely that they would have made the point if we had not informed them of the sAREX plans, but we had to consult them because of the potential conflict with Chinese training flights. it is, moreover,
encouraging that they did acquiesce in this full-scale SAREX. They could easily have upset our plans by letting us know that training flights were to take place. Together with the successful small-scale 3AREX in January, this seems to confirm that the Chinese are prepared to be helpful over search and rescue work and that our earlier difficulties vere not the result of deliberate Chinese policy.
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(I Corr)
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