China Trying To Scoop Malaysia In MH370 Search
Updated: 3:31pm UK, Monday 07 April 2014
By Alistair Bunkall, Sky News Defence Correspondent
The authorities are, quite rightly, not publicly concluding that they've found the plane; but reading between the lines, there are clear signs that they believe this is it.
Tony Abbott, the Australian PM, phoned his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak this morning to tell him what ADV Ocean Shield had heard overnight.
That is a sign of how significant this development is. The two leaders wouldn't speak in person were it being treated as a routine update.
And the wheels are now fully in motion to fly the relatives to Perth, maybe in the coming days. The Malaysians are compiling a list of the next of kin. Again, a demonstration of how seriously this news is being treated.
No-one has mentioned the Chinese. At least not voluntarily. It was a tweet from Chinese state-run media that got everyone's hopes up on Saturday evening. Much was made of their find. Pictures from Chinese journalists on board showed Chinese sailors listening to a signal with the correct frequency.
The news took all of us by surprise.
The head of the search operation Angus Houston kept his nerve. By rights China's news should have been relayed to the world by him or the Malaysians. That would have been the protocol.
A mea culpa: I accused the Australians of losing control of the media strategy.
In some respects I was right, this was not how they wanted the news to break. The Chinese had gone rogue.
But I should have given Angus Houston the benefit of the doubt. He has been extremely impressive since taking control of the situation and I think he knew exactly what he was going on over the weekend.
Behind the scenes he was learning about Ocean Shield's discovery.
On Sunday morning, in between a flurry of questions about the Chinese discovery, he mentioned that Ocean Shield had had an "acoustic event" but details were sketchy. Few of us gave it much thought: all eyes were on the Chinese discovery and HMS Echo steaming towards the area. That was the real discovery. Or so we thought.
Clearly, even to me, the two didn't match up. Either one of them had heard the black box, or neither of them. Given their distance from each other, it couldn't be both of them.
Patiently, Houston waited until Ocean Shield was sure about what it had heard, and only then was it announced as a major development.
In their respective press conferences today, Australia and Malaysia have declined to criticise the Chinese but the way they've answered questions about them, short and to the point, says much.
China has shown frustration with the Malaysians in particular throughout this past month. They first questioned and then demanded the Inmarsat data be handed over. They allowed their nationals to protest outside the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing. Things like don't happen without the state turning a blind eye at the very least.
And the breakthroughs were being made by companies in other countries: the British firm Inmarsat, the French company Airbus, Boeing from the US.
But I think they've also been frustrated with their own inability to find the plane. This was a chance to demonstrate the ability of their technology to the world. A chance to reassure their own people that China is superior.
A chance to say, "don't worry, we've got it; if anyone is going to solve this global mystery, we will".
They haven't managed to.
There were 154 Chinese nationals on board MH370 and clearly Beijing has a right to play a major role in the search, but more than once by various senior people I have been told how they are not operating as team players. There are clearly two separate search operations going on and that isn't helpful.
It might be a race to find the black box but it isn't a competition.
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