China on Tuesday denied media reports that an artillery drill in the East China Sea was in response to a planned military exercise between South Korea and the US.
The six-day, live ammunition exercise that began yesterday in the East China Sea off China’s coast was seen by some analysts as a “response to a [planned] joint exercise between the United States and Republic of Korea navies in the Yellow Sea,” said the China Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said there was no such link and a Chinese military officer said the timing was coincidental.
“This is a regular military exercise,” Qin told a regular news conference. “This is not related to the situation on the Korean Peninsula.”
Li Daguang (李大光), a professor at National Defense University and a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer, said the exercise was “not aimed at the US-South Korea joint exercise.”
“The PLA artillery exercise in the East China Sea and the joint US-South Korea exercise in the Yellow Sea are a complete coincidence,” Li told the Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper under Chinese control.
“The outside world shouldn’t read anything into this,” Li said.
The Yellow Sea lies to the north of the East China Sea and the areas of the two exercises would not overlap.
The Foreign Ministry said last week it was concerned about reports a US aircraft carrier could join the anti-submarine exercise with South Korea following a standoff with North Korea over the sinking of a warship from the South.
“Though the Chinese government did not say anything about the drill, anybody with common sense on military strategy will bet that they are related,” Shi Yinhong (時殷弘), an expert on Sino-US relations at Renmin University in Beijing, told the China Daily.
The joint exercise that had been expected last month will most likely take place this month, although a date has yet to be set, the Pentagon said on Monday.
Washington has not said officially whether an aircraft carrier would participate, as some news reports citing Pentagon sources have suggested.
Beijing has been angered by US navy ships engaging in surveillance in waters close to China’s southern coast.
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