PLA holds drills in Tibetan plateau
BEIJING: China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has held “longrange precision” strike drills on the Tibetan plateau bordering India and flown latest jet bombers over the South China Sea (SCS) amid ongoing border friction with New Delhi and rising tension with the US over disputes with littoral countries in SCS region, the Chinese defence ministry said on Thursday.
The Tibet military region, which borders India and is under the western theatre command in-charge of the boundary with India, has taken part in drills testing the PLA troops’ and armaments’ “long-range precision strikes”, defence ministry spokesperson, Ren Guoqiang said on Thursday.
The exercise tested PLA’s artillery both at day and night, Ren said, according to reports on the briefing.
“Recently, the Tibet Military Region has organised multiple types of artillery, day and night fire strike drills and artillery fire assault drills in high altitude areas, mainly to test the troops’ long-range precision strikes and fire assault capabilities in a plateau environment,” Ren said.
“The above exercises are part of the annual training plan and are not targeted at any specific country,” Ren added without elaborating.
The drills were held amid the ongoing border tension with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh even as both sides are involved in negotiations to disengage troops.
Several rounds of diplomatic and military talks have been held between the two countries but the disengagement is yet to be completed.
Separately, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin on Thursday sidestepped a question on Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh’s statement that those who want to threaten India’s territorial integrity should be worried about new Rafale jets bought from France.
Wang said: “We hope the Indian side’s relevant remarks will be conducive to regional peace and stability”.
China claims almost all of the energy-rich SCS -- a major trade route. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims.
The US wants to portray itself as “referee” over the SCS issue but is actually the one that disturbs regional peace, destroys regional cooperation and sows discord among regional countries, Ren said, in response to a US State Department release that accused China of causing instability in the region by conducting drills in the Xisha Islands.
The US according to a Chinese academic think tank has conducted six Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) so far this year, compared with four times in 2017, six times in 2018 and eight times in 2019, Wang Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies (NISCSS), writing for the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative said.
In addition, the U.S. military has conducted nearly 2,000 close-in reconnaissance operations on China from the air this year.