Five Chinese navy ships are currently operating in the Bering Sea off
the coast of Alaska, Pentagon officials said Wednesday, marking the
first time the U.S. military has seen them in the area.
The
officials have been tracking the movements in recent days of three
Chinese combat ships, a replenishment vessel and an amphibious landing
ship after observing them moving toward the Aleutian Islands, which are
split between U.S. and Russian control.
“This would be a first in
the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands,” one defense official said of the
Chinese ships, which have been operating in international waters. “I
don’t think we’d characterize anything they’re doing as threatening,”
the official said.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington couldn’t immediately be reached to comment.
Chinese
officials have complained in the past that the U.S. is meddling in
their affairs by flying military jets near a chain of islands known as
the Spratlys in the South China Sea.
The presence of the Chinese ships so close to U.S. shores is the latest demonstration of how China’s military is rapidly expanding its operations far from its own coast to oversee the nation’s growing global interests.
U.S. officials were at a loss to explain the Chinese naval movements, which came as President Barack Obama was visiting Alaska and the Arctic region on a three-day trip to address climate change.
The naval operation took place just before Chinese President Xi Jinping was set to preside over a World War II Victory Day parade
Thursday in Beijing, an event that the U.S. and its allies fear is
being used to showcase China’s new military strength and ambition.
Mr.
Xi also is heading to the U.S. later this month for a state visit,
which has already been overshadowed by tensions over Chinese military
activity, including alleged cyberattacks on the U.S. and island-building
in the South China Sea.
China has repeatedly said that its military activities aren’t designed to threaten any other nation but are expanding in tandem with its economic power, as well as its interests and responsibilities around the world.
Pentagon
officials said Wednesday that the Chinese ships were still in the area,
but declined to specify when the vessels were first spotted or how far
they were from the coast of Alaska, where Mr. Obama wound up his visit
Wednesday.
Pentagon officials also said there was no information
suggesting the Chinese ships had gone through the Bering Strait, a
narrow waterway north of the sea that abuts Alaska.
“We respect
the freedom of all nations to operate military vessels in international
waters in accordance with international law,” said Cmdr. Bill Urban, a
Pentagon spokesman, noting: “This is the first time we have observed
[People’s Liberation Army Navy] ships in the Bering Sea.”
U.S.
government officials acknowledged the curious timing of the Chinese
ships navigating in the waters near Alaska at a time when President
Obama is there, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Beijing’s
intent was still unclear.
The Pentagon official said there were a “variety of opinions” on how to interpret the Chinese ships’ deployment.
“It’s difficult to tell exactly, but it indicates some interest in the Arctic region,” the official said. “It’s different.”
China has made clear its intentions to become a so-called blue water navy, traveling far from its coastline, said Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser on Asia for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“We
better get used to it,” Ms. Glaser said. “The Chinese navy is taking on
more and more of an expeditionary character… the Chinese navy is going
global.”
Ms. Glaser noted that she didn’t see the navigation of
the Chinese vessels as particularly threatening. “China’s navy is going
to increasingly become a blue water navy,” she said. “I don’t think we
should be alarmed by it.”
The Pentagon has been scrutinizing
China’s military activities outside its immediate region for some time.
In recent months, defense officials have tracked those movements with
increasing wariness.
China has been particularly active in the
South China Sea, where it has been expanding a chain of islands by
piling materials dredged from the ocean floor atop of natural reefs and
rocks.
According to the Pentagon, China has expanded
significantly its claims to these islands, known as the Spratlys, from
about 500 acres at the end of last year to about 2,500 acres as of last
month.
Defense officials are concerned that China’s
island-building campaign has military aims that could create instability
in one of the region’s biggest shipping routes.
Beijing
acknowledged it was building the islands in part for military use, but
said it can make territorial claims to the islands, which sit about 700
miles off the Chinese coastline.
While Beijing has since said it
has stopped construction, a Pentagon senior official said last month
that it remained unclear just what work Beijing had ceased doing in the
Spratlys.
China has shown growing interest in using the so-called Northern Sea
Route to transport goods between Asia and the West via the Arctic in
recent years as melting polar ice has eased access for shipping. The
route can take several days less than the journey via the Suez Canal.
The
first Chinese vessel to sail the entire Northern Sea Route was an
icebreaker called the Snow Dragon in 2012, and some Chinese commercial
ships have used the route since, according to state media.
Beijing
also has shown growing interest in exploiting energy resources in the
Arctic region and in 2013 became a permanent observer to the Arctic
Council, whose members are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
Russia, Sweden and the U.S.
China and Russia held joint naval
exercises off the Russian Pacific coast—about 2,000 miles west of the
Bering Sea—between August 20 and 28, according to the official Xinhua
News Agency.
Seven Chinese ships took part, including two
destroyers, two frigates, two landing ships and one supply ship, Xinhua
said but it gave no details about where the vessels went afterward.
China’s navy confined itself to patrolling its own coast for the first five decades after the Communist takeover in 1949.
But in the past few years, it has ventured deep in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea.
Last year, Chinese navy ships made their debut at U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific, or Rimpac, joint naval drills in Hawaii.
As
part of that exercise, three of those ships participated in a special
“communications drill” with the U.S. and then made a port call in San
Diego, Calif., according to a Pentagon report that was released earlier
this year.
U.S. officials said an uninvited Chinese spy ship
observed the Rimpac drills from international waters just off Hawaii.
China’s defense ministry said at the time that its ship operations
complied with international law.
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