US naval execs inspect China carrier amid tensions
BEIJING—Senior US naval officers visited China’s lone aircraft carrier this week, China’s military said, as the two powers try to maintain military ties despite mounting tensions over Beijing’s claims in disputed waters in the South China Sea.
The visit by the 27-member delegation of US naval captains to the Liaoning, a refitted former Soviet carrier, came as Washington considers sailing warships near artificial islands that China had built in the strategic waterway, a move that would infuriate Beijing.
The US captains exchanged
views with their Chinese counterparts on topics like “personnel training and management, medical support and aircraft carrier development strategy,” the Chinese Navy’s official microblog said late on Monday.
The visit was not covered widely in Chinese media until Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the US delegation visited the Chinese Navy’s submarine school, the microblog said, part of what was a reciprocal visit for a oneweek trip to the United States by Chinese naval officers in February.
China-US relations have become increasingly strained over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in shipborne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have claims in the area.
US patrols
Washington is considering conducting freedom-of-navigation operations within 22 kilometers (12 nautical miles) of artificial islands that China has built in the South China Sea, without saying when it would do so.
Former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the first official foreign visit to the Liaoning in 2014, a move seen at the time as an attempt at transparency by China’s military.
Even so, little is known about China’s aircraft carrier program, which is a state secret.
Chinese state media have hinted new vessels are being built, and the Pentagon said in a report earlier this year that Beijing could build multiple aircraft carriers over the next 15 years.
The vessels are crucial elements in China’s development of an ocean-going blue water Navy capable of defending the growing interests of the world’s second-largest economy as it adopts a more assertive stance in maritime disputes.
Lighthouses
Earlier on Tuesday, the Chinese foreign ministry said Beijing had no intention of altering the existing status of territorial claims in the South China Sea with its newly built lighthouses, arguing that Beijing already had “indisputable sovereignty” in the contested waters.
China says its two 50-meterhigh lighthouses on Cuarteron Reef and Johnson South Reef in the Spratly islands will assist navigational security, but experts and diplomats call them a shrewd move to buttress Beijing’s territorial claims.
The Philippines, which refers to Cuarteron Reef as Calderon Reef and Johnson South Reef as Mabini Reef, consider the two reefs part of its territory as they lie within the country’s 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone in accordance with the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.
China, however, claims nearly the entire 3.5-million-squarekilometer, energy-rich waters of the South China Sea despite conflicting claims by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
No relation to comments
On Monday, the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said the lighthouses were “obviously intended to change actual conditions” and that Manila would not accept Beijing’s “unilateral actions as a fait accompli.”
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying defended the structures as “completely within China’s sovereignty,” arguing they had no relation to “some people’s” comments that Beijing was trying to bolster its hold over the islands.
“I want to stress that China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha islands and surrounding waters,” Hua said, using the Chinese name for the Spratlys.
“We absolutely do not need to build lighthouses to strengthen our sovereignty claims,” she added. “There is no issue of changing the status quo.”
In addition to the Philippines, the United States, Japan, Australia, Vietnam and Malaysia have criticized China’s construction activities on its artificial islands, saying these may be used for military purposes.
Accordingly, the United States has said its Navy and Air Force will sail or fly wherever international law allows.
‘Effective occupation’
While the US and other navies mostly rely on electronic instruments to confirm their ships’ positions, visual fixes from lighthouses are still used in certain conditions.
References to the lighthouses are likely to find their way into international shipping charts and registers and the logbooks of foreign navies.
Experts say that could help China to build a long-term legal picture of effective occupation, despite any formal diplomatic objections of rival claimants.