The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been conducting a number of exercises this month, and that has reportedly included simulated attacks on Taiwan and Japan’s Okinawa prefecture. A Chinese carrier strike group, led by the PLAN’s first aircraft carrier Liaoning, has been operating several hundred miles southwest of Japan’s Kitadaitou Island.
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The PLAN warships had transited the Miyako Strait on December 15, and began exercises the next day – immediately following the news that Tokyo was increasing its defense spending. The drills include aircraft launches from the carrier as well as simulated missile launches from the PLAN’s Type 055 missile destroyers that targeted the Ryukyu Island chain as well as military assets in Okinawa, a source with the Chinese military told Taiwan News.
Japan’s new National Security Strategy has called for new missile systems – including U.S.-made Tomahawks – to be deployed on the islands in the region. From those locations, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces could be able to strike targets in North Korea as well as mainland China.
It has been suggested that Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the exercises with the intention to undermine Japan’s security strategy and to show that any missiles located on the islands could be easily targeted by the PLAN.
Taiwan Threatened
During the exercises on Sunday, China also deployed 47 aircraft across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the largest incursion of Taiwan’s air defense zone in several months. According to reports, the aircraft included forty-two J-10, J-11, J-16, and Su-30 fighter jets, two Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft, a KJ-500 early warning aircraft, as well as a CH-4 and a WZ-7 military drone.
A total of seventy-one Chinese aircraft took part in the weekend’s “strike drills” around the self-governing island nation of 24 million people.
Despite never having controlled Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party views it as a breakaway province that will be returned to mainland control, by force if necessary. Taipei has strongly rejected Beijing’s sovereignty claims and said this week’s drills showed that the mainland was determined to destroy regional peace while trying to intimidate Taiwan’s people.
Joint Chinese-Russian Drills
The Chinese PLAN also completed joint naval drills in the East Chinese Sea with vessels from the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet. The December 21-27 exercises, dubbed “Maritime Interaction-2022,” were carried out in the waters off Zhoushan and Taizhou in China’s Zhejiang Province.
“Detachments of warships of the Pacific Fleet and the Naval Forces of the People’s Liberation Army of China have completed practical tasks within the framework of the bilateral naval exercise,” Russia’s defense ministry said via a statement to state media.
“The ships of the two countries, with the support of anti-submarine aviation, jointly searched for a submarine of a conditional enemy and fired a volley of jet depth charges,” the ministry added.
These were the latest exercises between the two nations, which have seen closer relations in recent years. While once the leader in the global Communist hierarchy, Russia following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union is now considered the “junior partner” to a resurgent China.
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Author Experience and Expertise: A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
