The Chinese navy has conducted 120 flight sorties from an aircraft carrier over the past three days, Japan said on Monday, highlighting the concerns that Beijing’s war games around Taiwan have raised for the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region.
Fighter aircraft took off and landed 80 times on the Shandong, China’s second aircraft carrier, in waters east of Taiwan and south of Japan as of Sunday night, while helicopters conducted an additional 40 flights from the ship.
The Shandong was operating south of Miyako, one of Japan’s southernmost islands, and was accompanied by three warships, the Japanese military said.
“In response to the take-off and landing operations, the Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets,” the Joint Staff of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces added.
Beijing launched the manoeuvres on Saturday to “punish” Taiwan after President Tsai Ing-wen met House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California last week. But the drills, which the People’s Liberation Army on Monday said its forces had successfully completed, have given China the opportunity to train its armed forces, and took place in proximity to Japan and US forces, the bulk of which are stationed in Okinawa.
Tsai held talks with McCarthy, the most senior elected US official to meet a Taiwanese leader on American soil, on a stopover after visits to two diplomatic allies in Central America.
In August, Beijing launched week-long war games in response to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei. These included a simulated blockade and invasion of the country and firing missiles over Taiwan’s airspace, some of which landed in Japanese exclusive economic zone — a provocative step the PLA has refrained from this time.
The Shandong, China’s first domestically produced aircraft carrier, took up service with the PLA Navy (Plan) in December 2019. It has previously conducted take-off and landing exercises with the J-15, the Plan’s carrier-borne fighter, in January in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely as its territory.
But the current drills mark a first for the carrier in the western Pacific, an area China defines as “far seas”.
The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, which is leading the exercises, said on Monday that the units involved were practising a “joint blockade” of Taiwan and released video footage of fighters taking off from a carrier.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it detected 59 Chinese military aircraft and 11 Chinese warships operating in the area around the island between 6am and 10am on Monday. It added that 39 of the military aircraft had flown across the unofficial Taiwan Strait median line or entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone.
Meanwhile, the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said its guided-missile destroyer Milius sailed close to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea on Monday to assert freedom of navigation, its second such movement in the area in under three weeks.
The PLA’s Southern Theater Command blasted the operation as “illegal” and said the Chinese navy “shadowed the ship and kept on alert with naval and air forces all the way”.