China’s air force staged another round of drills in the disputed South China Sea and Western Pacific, military officials said Sunday, labeling such exercises as the best preparation for war.
The country of 1.3 billion people is the midst of a massive modernization overseen by President Xi Jinping to make its military, which is already the planet's largest in terms of sheer personnel, a “world class force” and will boost defense spending by 8.1 percent this year, the biggest hike in three years.
China is thought to be most heavily focused on improving its air force and navy, doing everything from building stealth fighters to adding aircraft carriers, although the country has long insisted that it has no hostile intentions.
“China is committed to a path of peaceful development, and China pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature,” Zhang Yesui, a vice foreign minister and spokesman for the National People’s Congress, said at a news conference in early March. “China’s development will not pose a threat to other countries.”
The military expenditures, combined with the maneuvering and saber-rattling in the crucial South China Sea waterway and near Taiwan, have prompted concerns in Asian and U.S. corridors of power.
But Andrew Erickson, a professor at the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute in Newport, R.I., told the Washington Post that China's growing defense budget enables it to achieve the biggest and fastest shipbuilding expansion in modern history; the world’s largest navy, coast guard and maritime militia by number of ships; and the world’s largest conventional ballistic and cruise missile force.
According to Reuters, the air force said H-6K bombers and Su-30 and Su-35 fighters, among other aircraft, carried out combat patrols over the South China Sea and exercises in the Western Pacific after passing over the Miyako Strait, which lies between two southern Japanese islands.
It did not say when the exercises took place nor specify the parts of the South China Sea or the Western Pacific.
Separately, in a “freedom of navigation” operation on Friday, a U.S. Navy destroyer came within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island China has built in the South China Sea, provoking condemnation from China.
Sending Su-35 fighters over the South China Sea aims to help increase the air force’s ability to fight far out at sea, the air force said in the statement on its microblog.
Flying across the Miyako Strait, which also sits to the northeast of the self-ruled island of Taiwan that China claims as its own, accorded with international law and practice, it added.
“Air Force exercises are rehearsals for future wars and are the most direct preparation for combat,” it said, reportsReuters.
Just hours after the latest close military encounter between the US and China, when the US navy sailed a destroyer to within 12 nautical miles of the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as a "freedom of navigation" operation - a move that China condemned as a "severe provocation" just as the two countries launched an all-out trade war - the Chinese military launched its spring combat readiness drills with an air force exercise in the West Pacific and a joint combat patrol mission in the South China Sea.
The air force drills include H-6K bombers and Su-30 and Su-35 fighters, according to the PLA , and have a simple, if clear, purpose: "Air Force exercises are rehearsals for future wars and are the most direct preparation for war," the Chinese Air Force said on its Weibo account on Sunday, according to Reuters.
"The more exercises China practices far from its shores the better it will be positioned as an important force for managing and controlling crises, containing war and winning battles", it added.
Additionally, the PLA Navy is holding drills in the South China Sea to test the navy's combat readiness, China Central Television reported on Friday. It quoted the PLA Navy as saying the drills are routine and do not target any country, although the message had one clear recipient: USA.
"The South China Sea and East China Sea will be primary battlegrounds. The PLA is committed to be battle-ready through simulated combat training," Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday.
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