China to Hold Drills in Key Waters Amid U.S. Incursions
BEIJING (Dispatches) -- China said on Tuesday it will conduct military exercises in the South China Sea this week, just days after Beijing bristled at a U.S. aircraft carrier group’s entry into the waters.
A notice issued by the country’s Maritime Safety Administration prohibited entry into a portion of waters in the Gulf of Tonkin to the west of the Leizhou peninsula in southwestern China from Jan. 27 to Jan. 30, but it did not offer details on when the drills would take place or at what scale.
A U.S. carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the U.S. military said, days after Joe Biden began his term as president.
The contested waters have become another flashpoint in the increasingly testy bilateral relationship between Beijing and Washington. The U.S. military has steadily increased its intervention there in recent years as China asserts its territorial claims in the area.
The announcement of the drills in the Gulf of Tonkin, just east of Vietnam, came as the Southeast Asian country opened a key Communist Party congress in Hanoi.
China on Monday complained that the United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea, through which trillion dollars in trade flow every year, to "flex its muscles” and said such actions are not conducive to peace and stability in the region.
Beijing is also wary of Washington interference in Taiwan, flying dozens of warplanes into the island’s air defense zone over the weekend.
Taiwan air force jets screamed into the sky on Tuesday in a drill to simulate a war scenario, in a stepped-up flexing of muscles.
The base in the southern city of Tainan, home to F-CK-1 Ching-kuo Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF), frequently scrambles jets to intercept China’s air force.
In a hardened shelter, flight crew from the First Tactical Fighter Wing rushed to ready two IDFs as an alarm bell rang out, aiming to get them off the ground within five minutes of an emergency call, armed with U.S.-made Sidewinders and domestically-developed Wan Chien air-to-ground cruise missiles.
Colonel Lee Ching-shi told Reuters their jets usually go up armed with guns, Sidewinders and Taiwan-made Sky Sword missiles when reacting to Chinese jets and they can respond "at any time”.
"We are ready,” he said during a government-organized visit to the base. "We will not give up one inch of our territory.”
A notice issued by the country’s Maritime Safety Administration prohibited entry into a portion of waters in the Gulf of Tonkin to the west of the Leizhou peninsula in southwestern China from Jan. 27 to Jan. 30, but it did not offer details on when the drills would take place or at what scale.
A U.S. carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the U.S. military said, days after Joe Biden began his term as president.
The contested waters have become another flashpoint in the increasingly testy bilateral relationship between Beijing and Washington. The U.S. military has steadily increased its intervention there in recent years as China asserts its territorial claims in the area.
The announcement of the drills in the Gulf of Tonkin, just east of Vietnam, came as the Southeast Asian country opened a key Communist Party congress in Hanoi.
China on Monday complained that the United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea, through which trillion dollars in trade flow every year, to "flex its muscles” and said such actions are not conducive to peace and stability in the region.
Beijing is also wary of Washington interference in Taiwan, flying dozens of warplanes into the island’s air defense zone over the weekend.
Taiwan air force jets screamed into the sky on Tuesday in a drill to simulate a war scenario, in a stepped-up flexing of muscles.
The base in the southern city of Tainan, home to F-CK-1 Ching-kuo Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF), frequently scrambles jets to intercept China’s air force.
In a hardened shelter, flight crew from the First Tactical Fighter Wing rushed to ready two IDFs as an alarm bell rang out, aiming to get them off the ground within five minutes of an emergency call, armed with U.S.-made Sidewinders and domestically-developed Wan Chien air-to-ground cruise missiles.
Colonel Lee Ching-shi told Reuters their jets usually go up armed with guns, Sidewinders and Taiwan-made Sky Sword missiles when reacting to Chinese jets and they can respond "at any time”.
"We are ready,” he said during a government-organized visit to the base. "We will not give up one inch of our territory.”