China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has accepted an invitation to participate for the first time in a major US-hosted naval drill, but legal restrictions will limit its role to less sensitive exercises, like disaster relief, US officials say.
Beijing’s agreement to join the drills being held next year comes at a moment of heightened tensions between China and US ally Japan over disputed East China Sea islets, and unease in the US about China’s rapid military buildup and its cybercapabilities.
The Rim of the Pacific exercise (RIMPAC) is billed as the world’s largest international maritime exercise, with 22 nations and more than 40 ships and submarines participating the last time it was held off Hawaii last year.
Not all the participants are treaty allies with the US. Last year’s participants included Russia and India.
However, China has never participated in the event, although it did send observers to RIMPAC in 1998, the Pentagon said.
US Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged China had agreed to participate in RIMPAC during a little-noticed speech on Wednesday in Jakarta. Carter said he was “delighted that they have accepted” the invitation, extended last year by then-US defense secretary Leon Panetta.
At the time, Panetta said he asked China to send a ship to the exercises. Beijing said later it would give the offer “positive consideration.”
“We seek to strengthen and grow our military-to-military relationship with China, which matches and follows our growing political and economic relationship,” Carter said, according to prepared remarks on the defense department’s Web site.
US law prohibits the Pentagon from any military contacts with the PLA if it could “create a national security risk due to an inappropriate exposure” to activities, including joint combat operations.
There is an exemption for operations or exercises related to search-and-rescue and humanitarian relief, and China participated with the US last year in a counterpiracy drill.
Lieutenant Colonel Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said China’s participation in RIMPAC would adhere to US law and said that precautions had been taken by the Navy in drills to avoid revealing sensitive information.
“The US Navy has operational security safeguards to protect US technology and tactics, techniques and procedures from disclosure,” Wilkinson said.
Dean Cheng, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, questioned whether Chinese intelligence operatives would not benefit from their participation in RIMPAC, which also includes live-fire exercises by key US allies.
“If they have a frigate, or even a hospital ship, in the middle of that exercise, the hospital ship is going to be staffed by intelligence officers,” Cheng said.
He said that if the drills were designed in a way that was unhelpful to the Chinese, they would also be unhelpful to allies.
Wilkinson declined to speculate about which drills China might participate in, saying that the agenda had not yet been set for next year’s event.
“US-China military-to-military engagements can include a range of activities in areas of mutual interest, including maritime security, military medicine and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief,” she said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique