The U.S. Coast Guard released a report on Monday that some of China’s most advanced warships sailed within the exclusive economic zone of the United States, off Alaska, at the end of August. The incident came before an opt-ed in Chinese state-run Global Times published Sept. 8th that promised the PLA will show up on the U.S. coastline.
A photo taken by the U.S. Coast Guard at the time but posted on the Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service website only this week, shows three Chinese vessels photographed from the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf.
A second photo shows the cutter’s captain communicating with one of the Chinese vessels.
A statement from the U.S. Coast Guard said Bertholf and a second Coast Guard cutter, Kimball, “observed four ships from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) operating as close as 46 miles off the Aleutian Island coast.”
“While the ships were within the U.S. exclusive economic zone, they followed international laws and norms and at no point entered U.S. territorial waters,” it said.
The Coast Guard said the four ships were “a guided missile cruiser, a guided missile destroyer, a general intelligence vessel, and an auxiliary vessel.
It did not identify the ships further, but three weeks ago the Chinese Communist Party paper Global Times report mentioned a PLAN taskforce of four ships transiting the Soya strait, north of Japan, before entering the Pacific Ocean. A Chinese journalist also tweeted about the taskforce
The ships were identified as the Type 055 destroyer Nanchang, the Type 052D destroyer Guiyang, an electronic surveillance ship, and a supply vessel.
The PLAN guided-missile destroyer Nanchang. (Photo: chinamil.com.cn / Zou Xiangmin)Nanchang, the Type 055 guided missile destroyer (or “guided missile cruiser” in NATO classification), is a new class of 10,000-ton ship which, according to the Pentagon, boasts “a large load out of weapons including ASCMs [anti-ship cruise missiles], surface-to-air missiles, and anti-submarine weapons along with likely LACMs [land-attack cruise missiles] and anti-ship ballistic missiles.”
One of China’s newest warships, the Nanchang (hull number 101) was first seen publicly during an April 2019 naval parade off Shandong province commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of PLAN.
Meanwhile the Type 052D destroyer carries “advanced anti-ship and anti-air weapons and sensors, boosting the PLAN’s area air defense and anti-surface warfare capabilities,” according to a June 2021 Congressional Research Service report.
The U.S. Coast Guard reported that the PLAN ships came within 46 miles of the Aleutian Islands, which would be in international waters, but well within the 200 nautical mile-wide U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as defined under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
This is yet another incident escalating the rivalry between China and the United States for maritime dominance. One would expect that China will live up to the promise it made on the 8th to return.
Hopefully when Chinese warships pass through the Caribbean Sea or show up near Hawaii and Guam one day, the US will uphold the same standard of freedom of navigation. That day will come soon. pic.twitter.com/7fRn8PVZuS
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) September 8, 2021
Source: CNS News
