China is holding military drills across the East and South China Seas that may further disrupt domestic air travel and add to tensions with neighbors over regional territorial disputes.
China is to begin five days of drills in the East China Sea tomorrow, the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said on its Web site. Those exercises come while China is holding live-fire drills off Beibu Bay, or the Gulf of Tonkin, near Vietnam and drills in the Bohai Strait that both are to end on Friday.
While the scale of the drills is bigger than in the past, it is a coincidence the annual exercises are being held at the same time, the Beijing News reported yesterday, citing Zhang Junshe (張軍社), a researcher at China’s Navy Military Research Institute.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been expanding the reach of China’s navy and using the added muscle to more aggressively assert territorial claims in the region. Chinese and Japanese ships regularly tail one another off disputed islands in the East China Sea, while deadly anti-Chinese riots broke out in Vietnam in May after China set up an oil rig in waters also claimed by that country. The Philippines has sought UN arbitration in its maritime spat with China.
China claims much of the South China Sea, which may be rich in energy and mineral deposits, under its “nine dash-line” map first published in 1947, which extends hundreds of kilometers south from its Hainan Island to equatorial waters off the coast of Borneo, taking in some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
In the East China Sea, Taiwan, Japan and China lay claim to the chain of uninhabited Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Archipelago (釣魚群島) in China. The US has said it will come to Japan’s defense in any clash over the islands.
With the current drills, “what’s different from the past is that China is doing it in a more high-profile way, which does make China appear to be raising military tensions,” said Suh Jin-young, a professor emeritus of Chinese politics at Seoul’s Korea University. “But in Chinese eyes, the tensions were begun by the US and Japan, and China thinks it’s only conducting what it has been doing annually.”
The current military activity is having repercussions in China. China Southern Airlines said yesterday that its flights in the eastern part of the country might experience large-scale delays because of “special activities.” Airlines last week were ordered to cut a quarter of their flights at a dozen airports, including two in Shanghai, because of “high frequency exercises,” state media reported on Tuesday.
That order was issued a week after the People’s Liberation Army began three months of live-fire drills in six regional military commands, including the one that oversees Shanghai, the Xinhua news agency reported. Some training sessions would be conducted under a “complex electromagnetic environment,” the report said.
MAKING WAVES: China’s maritime militia could become a nontraditional threat in war, clogging up shipping lanes to prevent US or Japanese intervention, a report said About 1,900 Chinese ships flying flags of convenience and fishing vessels that participated in China’s military exercises around Taiwan last month and in January last year have been listed for monitoring, Coast Guard Administration (CGA) Deputy Director-General Hsieh Ching-chin (謝慶欽) said yesterday. Following amendments to the Commercial Port Act (商港法) and the Law of Ships (船舶法) last month, the CGA can designate possible berthing areas or deny ports of call for vessels suspected of loitering around areas where undersea cables can be accessed, Oceans Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said. The list of suspected ships, originally 300, had risen to about
DAREDEVIL: Honnold said it had always been a dream of his to climb Taipei 101, while a Netflix producer said the skyscraper was ‘a real icon of this country’ US climber Alex Honnold yesterday took on Taiwan’s tallest building, becoming the first person to scale Taipei 101 without a rope, harness or safety net. Hundreds of spectators gathered at the base of the 101-story skyscraper to watch Honnold, 40, embark on his daredevil feat, which was also broadcast live on Netflix. Dressed in a red T-shirt and yellow custom-made climbing shoes, Honnold swiftly moved up the southeast face of the glass and steel building. At one point, he stepped onto a platform midway up to wave down at fans and onlookers who were taking photos. People watching from inside
Japan’s strategic alliance with the US would collapse if Tokyo were to turn away from a conflict in Taiwan, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said yesterday, but distanced herself from previous comments that suggested a possible military response in such an event. Takaichi expressed her latest views on a nationally broadcast TV program late on Monday, where an opposition party leader criticized her for igniting tensions with China with the earlier remarks. Ties between Japan and China have sunk to the worst level in years after Takaichi said in November that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could bring about a Japanese
The WHO ignored early COVID-19 warnings from Taiwan, US Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said on Friday, as part of justification for Washington withdrawing from the global health body. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday said that the US was pulling out of the UN agency, as it failed to fulfill its responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO “ignored early COVID warnings from Taiwan in 2019 by pretending Taiwan did not exist, O’Neill wrote on X on Friday, Taiwan time. “It ignored rigorous science and promoted lockdowns.” The US will “continue international coordination on infectious
RSS