JAKARTA – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted a landing exercise in the East China Sea using a new warship.
One large landing craft and two utility landing craft have carried out integrated training in carrying out an amphibious landing mission in an undisclosed area of the East China Sea, the PLA’s Eastern Fleet Naval Command said in Beijing on Saturday.
The ship can carry armored vehicles and troops making it very suitable for carrying out large-scale landing missions.
The Eastern Fleet Command stated that the exercise was to test the combat capability of landing ships in the long term and with long range ranges.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense (MND) acknowledged that the location of the exercise was close to Taiwanese territory.
The PLA’s operations are in close proximity to Taiwan’s air and maritime space, deploying several military service branch units, ships and aircraft in response to Taiwanese independence-supporting forces, MND spokesman Senior Colonel Tan Kefei said.
“As long as the Taiwanese separatist forces do not stop provoking, the PLA will not stop acting to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said as quoted by Antara.
Beijing has previously highlighted Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing Wen’s concerns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
What happened between Ukraine and Russia is a dispute between the two sovereign states. The Taiwan issue is China’s internal affair. Such empathy is engineered to exploit the Ukraine crisis which is completely different from the situation in the Taiwan Strait, according to MND.