China took advantage of a calm weekend to hold war games at Japan sea.
China displayed its latest-generation frigate as its planes and ships held war games in the Sea of Japan over the weekend.
The Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement on its website late Saturday that the long-range exercises staged Friday pitted a red army against a blue one in a simulated bomber attack on a naval task force.
China’s activity was held at a time of bitter territorial disputes with its Asian neighbors.
It quoted the commander of an unidentified flight wing under the East Sea Fleet, Zhang Wenzhong, as saying the planes found, identified and struck their targets in a “radically short time.”
China has grown increasingly assertive over its claim to a chain of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan, recently dispatching more than a dozen coast guard vessels as Chinese fishing vessels swarmed the surrounding waters but the web statement made no mention of what sort of conflict was the exercise intended as a response to.
The ministry said the main ships involved in the exercise were the Jingzhou, a latest-generation type 054A class stealth frigate of which China is planning to deploy more than two dozen, and the type 052C destroyer Xi’an.
The ministry said aircraft were guided to their targets with the aid of early warning planes.
Other types of aircraft involved weren’t identified, although China has been touting the capabilities of its latest-generation long-range H-6K strategic bomber equipped with the DH-20 land-attack cruise missile, giving it the ability to hit targets as far away as Australia. Only Russia and the U.S. are currently able to launch cruise missiles from the air.
According to diplomatic sources, cited by Japan’s Kyodo news agency, China’s ambassador to Japan, Cheng Yonghua, told Japan that it would cross a “red line” if Japanese vessels took part in the so-called freedom of navigation operations launched by the US in the South China Sea. Cheng even went on to indicate that Beijing would not hesitate to take military action. This emerged only on Sunday, 21 August though the incident reportedly occurred in June.
Cheng was quoted as telling a Japanese official that China “will not concede on sovereignty issues and is not afraid of military provocations”.
Japan has no direct claims in the South China Sea though the mineral-rich region is a hotbed of territorial disputes among an array of nations including China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei. The sea has $5tn worth of trade passing through it every year.
Nonetheless, Japan and China are engaged in a bitter territorial row when it comes to the East China Sea.