Coronavirus: China’s navy gets back on training track with extensive drills
- PLA to make up for lost time with an 11-week exercise off the country’s northern coast
- The Shandong aircraft carrier expected to be put through its paces as pandemic eases
According to the China Maritime Safety Administration, an area off Tangshan’s coast in the Yellow Sea will be off limits to marine traffic from Thursday until July 31 for military exercises. Tangshan is about 200km (124 miles) east of the capital Beijing.
“Non-military vessels and personnel will be prohibited from entering the area designated for the drill,” the administration said in a notice, without saying which vessels could take part.
The announcement comes as most of China has lowered its alert for the pandemic, despite sporadic cases in the northeast and Wuhan, where the disease was first detected.
But safety concerns over the pandemic prompted the PLA to delay its annual spring recruitment programme until August and switch some training to classroom study of military theory, state news agency Xinhua reported.
