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PRC’s military exercises draw condemnation, heighten concern across Indo-Pacific

FORUM Staff

Stepped-up activity by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including bomber deployments and maritime live-fire exercises, is stoking concern about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) intentions amid territorial disputes with Indo-Pacific neighbors.

Vietnam condemned the recent deployment of PLA fighter jets and bombers to two contested island chains in the South China Sea. Vietnam claims sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly chains, which it calls Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, respectively.

The PRC seized the Paracel Islands, pictured, in 1976 and claims much of the South China Sea as its own — a declaration dismissed by an international tribunal in 2016. Despite that rejection, the PRC has pressed ahead with creating artificial features in disputed waters to house military installations.

PLA bombers and other aircraft conducted exercises in the South China Sea in late July 2020, including strikes against long-distance and maritime-surface targets, the PLA-sponsored website China Military reported. Warships, including a guided-missile destroyer, also conducted exercises in the area in early August.

“We have many times reiterated that the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos are inseparable parts of Vietnam’s territory,” Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said August 20, 2020, the Viet Nam News newspaper reported. “Vietnam has full legal basis and historical evidence to affirm its sovereignty over the two island chains … in line with international law.”

The PRC’s violation of Vietnam’s sovereignty “jeopardizes the peace and stability in the region,” she said.

The PRC also said it would conduct naval exercises in the South China Sea during the week of August 24, including off the coast of Guangdong province, which encompasses Hong Kong, and off the coast of nearby Hainan Island, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

The Chinese Communist Party’s  heightened military drills have not been restricted to the contested waters of the South China Sea. Throughout almost a week in mid-August, the PLA conducted a series of live-fire training exercises in the East China Sea, near the Zhoushan Islands, China Military reported.

The islands are about 550 kilometers north of Taiwan, a self-ruled democratic island that the PRC claims should be reunited with mainland China — by force, if necessary.

The PLA Navy said the exercise involved a flotilla from its East Sea Fleet and simulated a “sudden encounter with the enemy in the air and on the surface,” the South China Morning Post reported.

“Worryingly, this exercise is seen by some as a simulation for seizing the Pratas, or Dongsha, Islands,” Andrew Banfield, a senior lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Australian National University, wrote in an August 21 article on The Strategist, a website of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“These islands are administered by Taiwan and lie 310 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean,” Banfield wrote. “PLA Navy vessels must pass those islands before they can reach the Pacific Ocean.”

Taiwan deployed a contingent of Marines to the Pratas in advance of the PLA maritime exercise, which came about a week after an incursion by PLA fighter jets into Taiwan’s airspace during a visit to the island by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense issued an August 20 statement “expressing its stern attitude about recent Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army military pressure acts,” and said Taiwan would not be cowed by the PRC’s provocations.

With PLA exercises exacerbating tensions, the U.S. and its allies and partners have been demonstrating their commitment to regional stability with exercises that support a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

In mid-August, the biennial Rim of the Pacific, known as RIMPAC, the world’s largest naval exercise, began in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands. Aircraft, vessels and about 5,300 personnel from Australia, Brunei, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and the U.S. are participating in two weeks of training drills.

The U.S. also recently deployed three B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to support its Indo-Pacific security commitments.

“We are sharpening our lethality while strengthening relationships with key allies, partners and our sister-service teammates,” U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Christopher Conant, Bomber Task Force commander, said in an August 12, 2020, statement.

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