PLA conducts more live-fire drills in South China Sea as US keeps watch
- Chinese military exercises are being held in waters to the east and south of Hainan Island and in the Beibu Gulf
- An American spy plane was sent over the no-entry zones beforehand, according to Beijing-based think tank SCSPI
The exercises follow live-fire drills in the South China Sea last week that ran for “several days”, military mouthpiece PLA Daily reported on Sunday. It said the drills by the PLA South Sea Fleet included main gun firing, mine hunting, helicopter operations and rescue missions.
A day before this week’s scheduled PLA exercises, the US Air Force sent an RC-135W spy plane over the no-entry zones marked out by Chinese maritime safety authorities, according to the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing-based think tank that monitors military activity in the region.
On Tuesday, the reconnaissance aircraft left the US military base in Okinawa and flew near the Guangdong coastline and Hainan Island on a patrol that “highly matched” the locations of the planned PLA drills, the SCSPI said.
Beijing’s expansive claims to most of the South China Sea overlap with those of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China has rejected an international tribunal ruling that it has no legal basis for its claims.