Chinese aircraft carrier carries out combat exercises near Taiwan as tensions rise

A group of Chinese aircraft carriers – accompanied by the country’s most recent large destroyer – are conducting combat exercises “in the seas near Taiwan” as part of a training exercise in blue waters, the Chinese Navy said on Monday.

Liaoning, the first combat-ready aircraft carrier of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, was escorted by five warships as it left the East China Sea and crossed the Miyako Strait into the Western Pacific on Saturday, according to one statement issued by the Ministry of Defense of Japan the next day.

The aircraft carrier group’s “offshore” routine exercise was organized according to the military’s annual work plan, said ELP Navy spokesman Gao Xiucheng. The objective is to assess the formation of the group, as well as “increase its capacity to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests”, added the official.

Similar naval exercises in blue waters would now be carried out “regularly,” according to Chinese navy plans, Gao noted.

Both Taipei and Tokyo said they were monitoring the situation after a statement from the PLA Navy on Monday night, when the Taiwan defense ministry also reported raids in its air defense identification zone by 10 Chinese warplanes, including fighter planes. and anti-submarine aircraft.

Communist Party Newspaper Global Times said the Liaoning the combat exercise of the task group came in the wake of the USS destroyer of the US Navy MustinChina’s shipping operation in the East China Sea on Saturday.

He also followed the return of Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group to the South China Sea across the Malacca Strait on Sunday – an offshoot of the U.S. Pacific Fleet announced on Monday.

The state tabloid described the US Navy operations as “one-off provocations near China”, but said LiaoningChina’s combat training was “a coincidence that will happen more often in the future, as China’s aircraft carrier program progresses.”

PLA’s Navy exercise in the Pacific is notable for the first reported inclusion of the Type 055 destroyer Nanchang, said the newspaper, which added that the warship – commissioned last January – would become the primary escort for groups of Chinese aircraft carriers in the future.

A second major Type 055 destroyer, Lhasa, was commissioned last month, with six more awaiting formal service, reports say.

The nationalist Global Times, which carries some of Beijing’s most hard-line views, said the Liaoning The working group exercise did not target any specific country, but noted that it “aimed … against Taiwanese separatists”.

The phrase is a reference to members of the Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party, which advocates self-determination and is suspicious of its economy’s over-reliance on the Chinese market.

Su Tzu-yun, senior defense analyst based in Taipei, said Newsweek in a recent interview, that PLA operations near Taiwan served primarily for political rather than military purposes. Almost daily war plane incursions, he said, tend to increase in response to any improvement in US-Taiwan relations.

He told the Taiwan Central News Agency on Monday that the Liaoning The transport group was unlikely to be deployed to the South China Sea, where Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group is conducting its own attack exercises.

Chinese warships would likely remain in the Philippine Sea, said Su, who works for the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

The PLA message, Su says, is: “You come to my place; I will come to your place.”

Liaoning is one of two operational aircraft carriers in China, the other being its native sister ship Shandong, which entered service in December 2019.

Shandong, whose home port of Sanya is located in southern China’s island province of Hainan, will not be deployed in 2021.