US aircraft carriers in South China Sea send a message to Beijing

Two US aircraft carriers have carried out drills in one of Asia’s hottest spots to deliver a pointed message to China.

The aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan, bottom, and USS Nimitz on Saturday started one of the longest military drills to be held for years in the South China Sea. Picture: US Navy

Two US aircraft carriers have carried out drills in one of Asia’s hottest spots to deliver a pointed message to China that it doesn’t appreciate Beijing’s military ramp-up in the region.

The USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz on Saturday started some of the US Navy’s largest exercises in recent years in the South China Sea — at the same time that China is holding drills in the area.

With tensions rising between the two over trade, the coronavirus pandemic and China’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong, US officials said they wanted to challenge what they called Beijing’s unlawful territorial claims.

A US Navy spokesman said the Nimitz and Ronald Reagan conducted dual carrier operations in the waterway to “support a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

“These efforts support enduring US commitments to stand up for the right of all nations to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” he said.

The exercises by the two carriers and four other warships include round-the-clock flights testing the striking ability of carrier-based aircraft.

In recent years, the South China Sea has been the centre of Beijing’s effort to project its power farther from its traditional boundaries. China claims sovereignty over almost all of the sea, rejecting claims by neighbouring Southeast Asian nations, and it has deployed missiles and jamming equipment on newly built artificial islands to make it harder for the US and its allies to operate in the region.

Its latest military move in the sea started on July 1, when Chinese exercises began around the Paracel Islands, which Beijing seized from Vietnam in 1974. State media said they would finish on Sunday.

It is rare for major US and Chinese military drills to take place in the same region at the same time.

Rear Admiral George M. Wikoff, commander of the strike group led by the Ronald Reagan, declined to specify where in the South China Sea the carriers would operate. He said that the US exercises weren’t a response to the Chinese drills, but that Beijing’s rising military assertiveness justified the American naval presence.

“I think it really helps and serves to validate our operations out here in this region,” he said.

The US has sought to project military strength as China has emerged from the coronavirus pandemic pressuring countries and territories around its periphery. Beijing has increased jet-fighter flights near Taiwan, fought a border skirmish with India and passed a national-security law to limit Hong Kong’s autonomy.

US officials say China may be trying to take advantage of America’s struggles with the pandemic by stepping up its activity in the South China Sea, a major global trade route. An international tribunal ruled in 2016 that China’s claims in the sea — which overlap those of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and The Philippines — have no legal basis. Beijing rejected the ruling and continued with its military build-up.

In May, the US Navy sent three ships to the South China Sea to support a Malaysian oil-and-gas exploration vessel that had been closely monitored by Chinese ships. In recent years, the US has increased what it calls freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, in which its warships sail near Chinese-held islands and other disputed territory.

In late April, China said it had “expelled” a US destroyer that sailed close to the Paracel Islands, which are controlled by China but also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. The Pentagon said the operation was completed as planned and was followed by a further similar exercise near the islands in late May.

Allies of the US have joined some of its recent naval exercises in the South China Sea, including live-fire drills with the Australian navy in April and manoeuvring training with Japan’s navy in June.

The US Navy’s preparedness in the Asia-Pacific region was called into question when a coronavirus outbreak crippled an aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, forcing it into port in Guam for two months through early June. The carrier has returned to service and held joint drills with the USS Nimitz in the western Pacific.

The joint operations between the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz in the South China Sea would be the first time the US has held training with two carriers in the area since 2014.

Oriana Skylar Mastro, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who studies maritime disputes with China, said she favoured stepping up US military operations with allies in the South China Sea to resist China’s expansionism.

The Wall Street Journal