Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The Beihai Fleet of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy will carry out exercises from Wednesday to Saturday in the Yellow Sea, off China’s coast. Some analysts see them as a response to joint US-South Korea drills held last month off the coast of the Korean Peninsula in the Sea of Japan, which provoked Beijing’s protests.
The United States and South Korea have planned additional joint manoeuvres in the Yellow Sea early next month, though no dates have been announced.
The series of joint US-South Korean exercises are meant as a show of force aimed at rebuking North Korea after an international investigation found that it had torpedoed a South Korean ship in March, killing 46 sailors. However, China has decried them as a threat to its own security.
The United States has for some time insisted that the seas off mainland China and the Yellow Sea are international waters and are open to international shipping. China has conversely tried to exert its control over the same maritime space. Washington has also tried to reach a diplomatic solution to the various territorial disputes pitting China against its neighbours over their respective maritime boundaries. Beijing has instead tried to settle the matter by a show of force.
In a recent editorial in the People’s Liberation Army Daily, Major General Luo Yua, a frequent outspoken commentator on military matters, said, “If no one harms me, I harm no one, but if someone harms me, I must harm them.” In an unusual step, Beijing has also widely publicised its military exercise on land and sea.
Over the past two decades, the PLA has seen its official budget rise on average at a 12.9 per cent every year, which some experts believe to underestimate the real level of defence spending.
The PLA has always been under the control of the Communist Party, especially its leader. President Hu Jintao is in fact the head of the Central Military Affairs Commission, the top party body on PLA affairs. However, since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, Chinese presidents have tended to be less involved in the running of the PLA, focusing on other matters.
The situation is that “China's global security interests have expanded faster than the capacity of its traditional bureaucratic institutions to handle them,” said David Finkelstein, an expert on the Chinese military at CNA, an institute in Virginia that studies security issues
One consequence is that that in certain situations China has tended to leave diplomacy by the wayside in favour of a show of military and economic force. Because of this, its military leadership tends to raise the stakes in issues like the Yellow Sea exercises, making negotiations very difficult.
In June, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates reiterated the need to improve military relations with China. Beijing has so far failed to respond to the US opening, sticking instead to its guns, criticising US arms sales to Taiwan and US naval presence in the Pacific Ocean.
In the meantime, two Chinese warships have docked at Yangon's Thilawa port on Sunday with great fanfare. They are set to participate in joint exercise with the Myanmar Navy.
“The five-day mission is aimed at promoting friendly relationships between the two armed forces of the two countries and exchange between the two navies,” Xinhua news agency reported.
China is the best ally Myanmar’s military regime has. It sells weapons to the junta, despite a UN ban, getting oil and precious commodities like teak and gems in exchange.
