US B-52s have carried out training in the vicinity of the South China Sea and Japan’s Okinawa Island, the US Air Force (USAF) said yesterday, in an exercise a Chinese newspaper linked to China’s drills near Taiwan.
The air force said the bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base on the US Pacific island territory of Guam and “transited to the vicinity of the South China Sea” on Tuesday.
“The B-52Hs conducted training and then transited to the vicinity of Okinawa to conduct training with USAF F-15C Strike Eagles, before returning to Guam,” it said.
“Continuous bomber presence [CBP] missions are intended to maintain the readiness of US forces. The US Pacific Command’s CBP missions, which have been routinely employed since March 2004, are in accordance with international law,” it added.
“This was a routine mission,” an air force spokeswoman said.
Taiwanese media have speculated that the exercise could have been a warning from Washington to Beijing following China’s stepped-up military presence near Taiwan.
Asked about the US bombers at a news briefing on Thursday, Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Colonel Wu Qian (吳謙) said only that Chinese armed forces had the situation under control and would defend the country’s sovereignty, as always.
The ministry yesterday referred reports to Wu’s statement, without elaborating.
China has been issuing increasingly strident warnings to Taiwan to toe the line and has been flying military aircraft around the nation in what Beijing has called “encirclement patrols.”
The Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times yesterday said in an editorial that if the US bombers were meant to send a message to Beijing about Taiwan, it would not work.
“The US cannot prevent [China from] exerting military pressure on Taiwan,” the newspaper said. “[Chinese] military aircraft will fly closer and closer to Taiwan, and in the end fly above the island.”
“If the Taiwan authorities openly promote the ‘Taiwan independence’ policy and cut off all official contacts with” China, then Beijing “will deem Taiwan a hostile regime and has endless means to deal with it,” it added.
Taiwan and the South China Sea are two major fault lines between Washington and Beijing.
China has been angered by US “freedom of navigation” patrols in the disputed South China Sea, where China has allegedly reclaimed land for military bases, and by US support for Taiwan’s democracy.
As part of China’s military modernization, a new aircraft carrier could soon begin sea trials, based on images on Chinese news portals this week of the vessel leaving its dock in the northern city of Dalian.
Beijing yesterday warned shipping to keep away from an area off Dalian for a week, for what it called military activities, but gave no further explanation.
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