If the Chinese had reason to believe the flight was high jacked and headed toward their main land do you think they would hesitate for a second to shoot it down? They kill people even babies all the time to serve the greater good. They are “good” like that.
President Obama smugly told Bob Woodward (cited above)that the US could just absorb another 9-11 attack. I think China would absorb an attack, blame it on their Muslim separatists and use it as an excuse to go in and kill thousands. But making themselves the bad guy is very unlikely. It is almost impossible to keep something like this secret. When the Soviet premier came out and said they didn’t shoot down KAL-007, Reagan produced the recording of the ground controllers ordering the pilot to fire his missile. They know better than to lie. It seems very improbable that anybody shot it down. It’s most likely it was hijacked and then crashed due to whatever was going on in the cockpit. Or, it might just have been a spectacular “oops!”
See Post 121.