Summary and Key Points: China’s recent maneuvers involving the aircraft carrier Shandong near Taiwan reveal strategic rehearsal for potential conflict scenarios, particularly an invasion of Taiwan.
-Notably, the Shandong navigated unusual, narrow routes through the Philippines instead of the typical, closely-monitored Bashi Channel.
-Experts suggest these alternate routes could bypass U.S. Navy defenses, complicating American strategic responses.
-Admiral Sam Paparo identifies these operations as clear rehearsals, emphasizing urgency in accelerating U.S. military modernization.
-China’s new approach reflects increasing preparation for contingencies in a Taiwan conflict, underscoring the strategic importance of U.S. naval readiness and highlighting vulnerabilities in traditional maritime chokepoints in the Western Pacific.
How China’s Shandong Aircraft Carrier Is Testing the Limits of U.S. Naval Defenses
Last week, the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) CV 17 Shandong aircraft carrier conducted joint maneuvers with other Chinese Navy and naval aviation assets in a zone southeast of the Republic of China (ROC), the island of Taiwan. This exercise appeared to be largely centered on operations involving the Shandong. It was conducted separately and just before the two-day People’s Liberation Army (PLA) air and navel harassment exercises were conducted around Taiwan.
While the carrier conducting special trials and practice operations off on its own and away from the main body of the fleet is nothing new, the carrier’s routing during this most recent deployment was notable. From all appearances, the Shandong has passed up the usual and more logical routing through the Bashi Channel between the ROC and the Philippines.
Instead, the carrier sailed between and wound through the Philippine islands, charting a course through significantly narrower waterways. This routing would have had the Shangdong steaming to the east of the ROC, which is not impossible but just far less convenient.
The ROC media reported this change to an other-than-normal cruise pattern. Mainland media did not report the news. Exposing in print that a PLAN major vessel had taken a previously uncharted course of this kind would have probably earned any PRC publication a visit from the notorious and pathologically intrusive security apparatus—and possibly even a jail term.
However, the question is not who reported the carrier’s actions and who did not; the question is why the ship sailed this way.
Preparing For Conflict With the United States over Taiwan?
Echoing the assessments of regional military observers, naval analysts tell 19FortyFive that exploring how to navigate through the Philippines in this manner is another chapter in the PLAN’s rehearsing for an invasion of the ROC. The PLAN is keen to train for any number of scenarios where they would have to square off against US Navy warships—this being one of them.
In the eventuality of an invasion, the Chinese force would need to be prepared to move via alternative routings to bypass parts of the United States Navy’s fleet. At a February conference in Hawaii, Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Sam Paparo suggested that drills such as these are preparations for the “main event”—an invasion of the ROC.
“[China’s] aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan right now are not exercises, as they call them. They are rehearsals,” Adm. Paparo said. “They are rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan to the mainland.”
Paparo also called for a radical acceleration of Washington’s efforts to re-arm and modernize the US armed forces. As he stated, that process needs to start with “procurement at the speed of combat, not at the speed of committees.”
Taiwan Operational Scenarios
Commentators who spoke to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) stated this new route could give the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) another unanticipated and southbound option to move through the western Pacific instead of the usual course through the Bashi Channel.
The problem with that usual course is that the channel is a highly monitored waterway and is otherwise thought of as a strategic chokepoint in the case of an invasion of the ROC. The other possibility to the north would involve transiting through the waters between Japan and Taiwan, specifically the Miyako Strait.
As one former NATO-nation intelligence officer pointed out, “a waterway is only a chokepoint if the bad guys go that way. If they don’t and you move to block a [PLAN] naval strike group that is not there, then you end up in the wrong place, out of position, and unable to stop the “main event,” as Paparo refers to the potential ROC invasion.
One of the military commentators who spoke to the SCMP was retired PLA colonel Yue Gang. His assessment was that the Shandong task force had entered the western Pacific through the Balabac Strait, then the Sulu Sea, and finally the Leyte Gulf off the Philippines.
Yue said the most obvious reason for that routing was that a US aircraft carrier battle group was nearby. The USS Carl Vinson and the ships in its task force then entered the South China Sea from the opposite direction.
The Shandong is the PLAN’s first domestically built aircraft carrier, but it is really only a slightly enlarged copy of the CV16 Liaoning carrier, which was designed in the Soviet Union and first purchased from Ukraine when it was still named the Varyag. That ship then underwent extensive re-fitting and installation of a modern-day propulsion system before it was commissioned into the PLAN.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
