This study will examine the crisis following the mid-air collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over international waters off the coast of China. The crisis, with its many ambiguities, uncertainties and ramifications, lends itself to analysis based on the ideas of conflict theorist Karl Marx and interaction theorist Georg Simmel.
The crisis is a fascinating subject for inquiry based on social theory because it involved not only the individuals on the two planes (including the deceased Chinese pilot who apparently caused the collision--if we are to believe the American version), but also the two powerful nations of the United States and China. The crisis had a number of factors which are wide open to controversy, from the cause of the collision to the question of international territory to the issue of intelligence gathering. From the point of view of Simmel's, the crisis involves the essential factor of interaction on many levels--including the personal and the international. From the Marxist perspective, the conflicts abound, from political ideology to economics to questions of class.
On April 1, 2001, a United States intelligence gathering Navy EP-3 airplane was involved in a collision with a Chinese fighter jet. That is a fact accepted by all sides. At first, the Chinese tried to make the question of the location of the collision an issue, but since that opening salvo about sovereign aerial territory, the Chinese dropped that issue. It is also accepted by both sides that the fighter jet was rendered helpless by the collision and crashed into the waters off China, with the pilot dying. Finally, both sides agree that the American plane landed at a military airfield in China.
The 24 military personnel on the American plane were held captive by the Chinese for eleven days, then released to much fanfare in the United States. The status of the plane itself remains in question. Apparently, according to the Un...