B-52 bombers passed through what is likely to become the most contested area of China’s new “air defense identification zone”: the airspace above islands that are the subject of a tense sovereignty dispute between Japan and China.
The flights over the East China Sea came a week before Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to visit Beijing as part of a weeklong trip that will include stops in Japan and South Korea amid American attempts to revive its “pivot” to Asia. Administration officials said Mr. Biden would raise American concerns about China’s territorial claims with the leadership in Beijing.
The American officials said the United States military would continue to assert its right to fly through what it regards as international airspace by continuing a standard cycle of training flights in the area. United States officials said there had been no Chinese response to Tuesday’s bomber run, which was a roundtrip from Guam.
