Malaysia's handling of lost plane irritates China

Anxious relatives have thronged a temporary Malaysia Airlines office set up in a Beijing hotel and accuse Malaysian officials and the carrier of withholding information.

“Some of the information released by the Malaysian government and airline turns out to be true, some turns out to be false,” said Nan Jinyan, a woman from Shanghai whose brother-in-law was aboard the flight.

“I believe they are still deciding which information to release and which isn't convenient to release right now.”

China has the world's second-largest military budget, at $114 billion last year, and has spent heavily on expanding the ability of its navy to project power farther from its shores.

But the search that began in the Gulf of Thailand on the edge of the South China Sea, which China claims as its territorial waters, has relied heavily on expertise from the United States and Britain on the other side of the globe.

China is the biggest trading partner for most of its Asian neighbors, buying tens of billions of dollars' worth of raw materials and components from them annually.