China criticized America’s aircraft carrier deployments to Asia two days after promising to send its carrier battle group into the Eastern Pacific.
America is “putting on another muscle show and making waves again in the South China Sea,” Xinhua News Agency asserted Tuesday, commenting on the deployment of the USS Carl Vinson to the Western Pacific to boost America’s naval air forces in this part of Asia.
“The United States, self-proclaimed world police, has developed a habit of putting on a military show of force on China’s doorstep,” Xinhua argued, “Even though the region is thousands of miles away from its soil, U.S. warplanes and warships have been patrolling dangerously close to Chinese territory.”
“Such behavior is rooted in the mentality of U.S. imperialism and hegemony,” the state-run media outlet asserted.
Xinhua argued that “U.S. intervention has brought about nothing but heightened tension in the South China Sea, and enticed U.S. allies to take more provocative measures to press for their illegitimate territorial claims.”
“China hopes to work with other countries to make the South China Sea a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation, not a hotbed of war,” the news outlet concluded.
In recent weeks, China has been projecting power with its carrier battle group led by the Liaoning. The group carried out live-fire drills in the Bohai Sea, sailed through the East China Sea, conducted exercises in the Western Pacific, and drilled in the South China Sea.
China has also stated that it hopes to eventually send its carrier to the Eastern Pacific, potentially extending its reach to America’s western shores.
“Our aircraft carrier is not a recluse. Sooner or later, it will push past the ‘second island chain’ and into the Eastern Pacific,” the People’s Daily wrote Sunday.
“Aircraft carriers are strategic tools which should be used to show China’s strength,” the Global Times, a publication produced by the People’s Daily, argued late last month.
China’s carriers should have “the courage to sail further [sic],” the paper added, “The Chinese fleet will cruise to the Eastern Pacific sooner or later.”
“The visit of USS Carl Vinson is set to destabilize the current peace,” Lin Zhiyuan, PLA Academy of Military Sciences scholar, told the Global Times Sunday.
“The US will certainly continue to stir up the South China Sea issue,” Li Jie, a Beijing-based naval expert, argued, “Facing pressure from the US, China needs to make preparations, such as construction of reefs and islands and enhancing building-up of strategic forces.”
China is already anticipating a confrontation at sea with the incoming administration.
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