Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows.
Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict.
“If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an interview.
Photo: AFP
“Is the fact that the Chinese are sending research vessels into this area to map what is effectively undersea battle space surprising? Probably not,” he said.
The center’s Micronesia Security Monitor, launched yesterday, showed three Chinese research vessels, including the space and missile tracking ship Yuanwang 7, near the tiny Pacific island of Kiribati over the last month.
A Pacific Ocean neighbor of Hawaii with close ties to Beijing after switching recognition from Taiwan in 2019, Kiribati has a vast exclusive economic zone spanning 3.6 million square kilometers.
Last year it expressed concern at China’s test of an intercontinental missile that landed near its waters.
Two more Chinese research vessels traveled east of the US territory of Guam, near island states with US defense compacts, the Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands, the monitor showed.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment on the purpose of the Pacific research vessel activity. Kiribati did not respond to a request for comment.
Between August and this month, the US has held nine multilateral war drills near Guam with allies, the monitor showed.
Exercise Malabar — which saw Australia, India, Japan and the US drill anti-submarine warfare and air defenses — concluded yesterday with the Australian Defence Force saying the exercise was important to “deter coercion in the Indo-Pacific.”
The US has military bases in Guam and Marshall Islands, and overflight rights and maritime access to three freely associated states, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Palau and the Marshall Islands are diplomatic allies of Taiwan.
“Thirty years ago the US presence in these places would have been a deterrent; today that makes us a target, as a result of modern technology,” Bettis, who lives in Guam, said shortly before yesterday’s launch.
The monitor’s visuals also showed the spread of the US military footprint across Micronesia, including upgraded wharves and airfields.
The project is funded by commercial donors, the Carnegie Corp and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
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