Military Exercise Denied By China

The 6-day, live ammunition exercise starting on Wednesday in the East China Sea off China’s coast was seen by some analysts as a “response to a (planned) joint exercise between the United States and Republic of Korea navies in the Yellow Sea,” said the China Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said there was no such link and a Chinese military officer said the timing was coincidental.

“This is a regular military exercise,” the spokesman Qin told a regular news conference. “This is not related to the situation on the Korean Peninsula.”

Li Daguang, a professor at China’s National Defense University and a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer, said the exercise was “not aimed at the U.S.-South Korea joint exercise.”

The Yellow Sea lies to the north of the East China Sea and the areas of the two exercises would not overlap.

China’s Foreign Ministry said last week it was concerned about reports a U.S. aircraft carrier may join the anti-submarine exercise with South Korea following a standoff with North Korea over the sinking of a warship from the South.

“Though the Chinese government did not say anything about the drill, anybody with common sense on military strategy will bet that they are related,” one expert on China-U.S. relations, Shi Yinhong of Renmin University in Beijing, told the China Daily.