China’s plane diplomacy

We’ve heard of ping-pong diplomacy and panda diplomacy … and now there’s plane diplomacy.

Actually, the fact that state-run Chinese airlines make politically motivated decisions about whether to give contracts to Boeing or Airbus — or to split the difference — is not new. But it’s lately been brought into focus:

China sent contradictory signals on Thursday about its policies toward the United States two weeks after the Obama administration enraged the Chinese by approving the sale of $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan …

On Thursday, China signaled some willingness to cooperate militarily, with an American official saying that China would allow an American aircraft carrier to visit Hong Kong soon. But at the same time, Air China, the country’s flagship airline, announced that it would buy 20 jets from the European consortium Airbus, rather than from Boeing, one of the manufacturers of arms for Taiwan.

On the one hand, there’s the potential military-to-military progress between the U.S. and China. On the other hand, there’s the plane snub. (For more context, see Kit Gillet’s recent "Not in Plane Sight" article for FP.