The Chinese navy will hold a live-ammunition exercise this week in the Yellow Sea, where Washington and Seoul announced their own plan for a military exercise that has riled Beijing, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said yesterday.
The ministry said a naval fleet would stage the drill from Wednesday to Saturday in the sea between China and the Korean Peninsula, Xinhua news agency reported.
“This is an annual routine training exercise, mainly involving the firing of shipboard artillery,” the ministry said, according to Xinhua.
The announcement, nonetheless, follows a pattern of China publicizing its own military exercises in parallel to those held by Washington and Seoul, which Beijing has criticized as destabilizing at a time of tensions over North Korea.
China said its naval exercise would be held off Qingdao, meaning they would be well away from the US-South Korea exercises in waters closer to the Korean coast.
Friction between Beijing and Washington over Chinese maritime claims and US naval activities has added to irritants between the two countries, which have also sparred this year over Taiwan, Tibet, the Internet and Chinese exchange rate policy. The US has criticized Chinese claims to swathes of the South China Sea, where Taiwan and several Southeast Asian states also assert sovereignty.
The US has said it will conduct an anti-submarine warfare exercise with South Korea in the Yellow Sea early next month. That is intended to send a warning to North Korea that Washington is committed to defending Seoul, the Pentagon said this month.
Last month, the US and South Korea held a naval drill in the Sea of Japan off the Korean Peninsula, prompting condemnation from China, which answered with its own heavily publicized military exercises.
Last month’s drill was initially scheduled to take place in the Yellow Sea, but was moved to the other side of the Korean Peninsula after objections from Beijing.
The US and South Korea accuse the North of torpedoing a South Korean naval ship in March, killing 46 sailors.
Chinese military newspapers have said the US-led military exercises in the Yellow Sea would be unduly provocative.
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