Chinese State Media Suggests Warships Will ‘Soon’ Sail Near Hawaii
Chinese and Russian ships have moved closer to America’s Pacific territories amid increasing tension in the region.
As tensions simmer in the Pacific between the United States and China, the two rivals are publicly trading barbs over their respective military conduct at sea.
On Sunday, the Department of Defense 聽between Chinese navy ships聽near the Aleutian Islands off Alaska and two U.S. Coast Guard Cutters — including the 贬补飞补颈颈-产补蝉别诲听碍颈尘产补濒濒. A military press release, which has since been taken down from military websites, described the interaction as “safe and professional with verbal communications.”
The photos were released after the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper Global Times said on Wednesday that Americans should after a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near a in the South China Sea that the Chinese .
The Global Times, which publishes in Chinese and English, is widely seen as a platform for the Chinese . “Hopefully when Chinese warships pass through the Caribbean Sea or show up near Hawaii and Guam one day, the U.S. will uphold the same standard of freedom of navigation,” Global Times top editor Hu Xijin tweeted. “That day will come soon.”
Chinese navy ships previously have sailed in Hawaii’s waters as invited guests for the Oahu-based U.S. Pacific Fleet’s biannual exercise Rim of the Pacific, most recently in 2016. In 2014 and 2016 the Chinese navy also sent spy ships to watch RIMPAC from a distance, though U.S. officials said that Beijing聽.
But relations have soured, and in 2018 the U.S. disinvited China’s navy from the exercise. The Global Times criticized the U.S. Navy for holding RIMPAC last summer, publishing articles in English that highlighted local opposition and played up fears the exercise would lead to a major Covid-19 outbreak in Honolulu.
The U.S. Navy聽responded to Hu asserting that it聽“has upheld the standards of freedom of navigation longer than the PLA (China’s) navy has existed” and pointed out that聽Chinese spy ships have already sailed near Hawaii and a Chinese aircraft carrier sailed freely .
Chinese ships aren’t the only ones moving close to Hawaii and Guam.聽Russian ships also have regularly operated near Hawaii, in particular spy ships keeping tabs on maneuvers during RIMPAC.
Earlier this year a Russian spy ship lingered near Kauai during scheduled training at the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility, and in June the Russian navy held its largest exercise in the Pacific since the Cold War just off Hawaii, leading American jets to scramble in response to Russian bombers flying close to the islands.
