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By Ryan Chan
China News Reporter
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What's New
China has sent one of its aircraft carriers to the contested South China Sea near the shores of Vietnam, according to a satellite image captured on Tuesday.
This came as the Chinese military, officially known as the People's Liberation Army, scheduled a four-day war game in the region.
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Newsweek has contacted the Chinese and Vietnamese defense ministries for comment by email.
Why It Matters
China's sovereign claims in the South China Sea overlap with those of regional nations, including Vietnam and the Philippines, which are located to the west and the east of the contested waters, respectively.
The South China Sea drill came after the Chinese military held a large exercise near Taiwan last week, a self-ruled island that Beijing views as part of its territory despite never having governed it.
What To Know
The image was captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites, which showed the CNS Shandong, the second operational aircraft carrier of the Chinese navy, steaming southwest toward a military exercise area off the coast of China's Hainan Island in the South China Sea.
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The Shandong is homeported at a naval base in Sanya on Hainan Island. It took part in the country's first dual aircraft carrier operation in late October while underway in the South China Sea with CNS Liaoning, the first Chinese aircraft carrier in service.
The Chinese war game, which is planned to run from Wednesday to Saturday, covers the waters between southwest of Hainan Island and Vietnam's eastern coast, south of the Gulf of Tonkin.
A small southern portion of the drill area crosses the maritime border between China and Vietnam, while its northwestern portion is located within the two countries' Common Fishery Zone, which was established for the purpose of preserving and sustainably utilizing the marine living resources.
Meanwhile, a Chinese WZ-10 military drone was spotted flying near the exercise area after taking off in mainland China on Wednesday, according to Duan Dang, a Vietnam-based South China Sea watcher who used the online aircraft tracking service Flightradar24 to monitor the drone flight.
What People Are Saying
Duan Dang said on X on Wednesday: "The exercise was declared while Xi Jinping was visiting Sanya." During a visit to the island on Tuesday, China's leader urged the local government to make the Hainan Free Trade Port an important gateway driving China's opening up.
Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, said at a symposium on China's foreign relations in Beijing on Tuesday: "We have taken justified and firm measures to safeguard China's rights against certain countries' provocations in the South China Sea, and worked with ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] countries for peace and stability in the South China Sea."
What Happens Next
As of Wednesday, USS Carl Vinson, one of the United States' aircraft carriers, was underway in the Philippine Sea, east of the South China Sea. It remains to be seen whether it will enter the contested waters to demonstrate America's commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation.
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