The damaged American aircraft, a state-of-the-art Naval EP-3 equipped with some of the most advanced technology in the American intelligence arsenal, landed safely on a Chinese military base on the island of Hainan in the South China Sea. The Chinese fighter and its pilot are still missing.

On Tuesday, Chinese authorities permitted U.S. diplomats to meet with the plane's 24 crewmembers for the first time since the emergency landing. However, the Chinese are refusing to immediately release the crew members or the plane.

Numerous sources have reported that Chinese authorities, defying U.S. demands, boarded the plane and removed the crew, but this has not been confirmed. However, the UPI wire service did quote a former intelligence official who claims to have seen spy photos collaborating those reports.

At a Tuesday press conference, Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters: "I hope it is a beginning of an end to this incident. I hope that this meeting will lead to the rapid release of all of the members of the crew ... and I hope also it will lead to the rapid return of our airplane."

After meeting with the crew members, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock told reporters, "My counterparts here have given me some access. I have seen the entire crew. They are all in good health and are being well taken care of. Their spirits are high and we're going to get them home as soon as possible."

Later Tuesday, President Bush admonished the Chinese to end the conflict. "It is time for the Chinese government to return our plane," he said.

Whether the incident compromises American intelligence capabilities, most observers expect diplomacy to prevent a crisis. But against the background of renewed tensions between Beijing and Washington, the stakes of the face-off are heightened.

Salon asked a panel of experts on international relations to comment on the current situation.

Robert Beisner is professor emeritus of history at American University. He is currently writing a biography of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

I think the Bush administration is struggling not to get back to Cold War rhetoric. There clearly has been a shift in tone since the Clinton administration left. These guys are prepared to be harder toward the Chinese and less forgiving. There's some real infighting going on in the administration. Powell always looks for a way away from conflict. I didn't favor him to be secretary of state -- he's too inclined to negotiate away conflicts. My sense is that the Bush administration is trying not to get back into the old days. They've got an awful lot riding on decent relations with China, as every administration has for 20 years.

I don't know if anybody knows for sure what's going on with the Chinese. The political leadership may be more inclined to work out something than the military is. The Chinese have a hard time making decisions -- they have a very cumbersome state structure and they've got a "dictatorship," but they've still got politics and the equivalent of parliamentary elections coming up, and no one wants to look soft on the United States.

This crisis reminds me of the Pueblo incident [the American spy ship that was seized by North Korea in 1968]. They took the whole crew hostage and took the ship. There have been other cases going way back to World War II when American bombers couldn't complete bombing runs and had to make emergency landings in the Soviet Union. The Soviets were supposed to be our good allies, but they hauled the crews in, held them incommunicado and, we gradually learned over the years, did retro-copying of the B-29s. Their technologists crawled all over the airplanes so they could create bombers like that. Now, I'm sure the Chinese would be very interested in what's on that airplane.

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