By Shan Jie Source:Global Times Published: 2017/7/15 0:03:40
Japan should ‘get used to’ military exercises: defense ministry
China’s defense ministry on Friday told Japan to “get used to it” after six Chinese bombers flew through the Miyako Strait.
“This is a routine. The activity of Chinese warplanes flying across the Miyako Strait is legal and appropriate,” Colonel Ren Guoqiang, spokesman of China’s Ministry of National Defense, said on Friday, according to the ministry’s official website.
China will continue to organize such exercises according to the need of the situation and tasks in the future. The related parties should not make a fuss and over-read into this, but just get used to it, Ren noted.
Japan’s defense ministry issued a statement late on Thursday describing the flyover by the formation of H-6 bombers earlier that day as “unusual,” while noting that there had been no violation of Japanese airspace, Reuters reported on Friday.
“The Miyako Strait is the most convenient international sea way for China to enter the Pacific Ocean,” Jiang Lifeng, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.
Japan had designed the strait as a chain to prohibit Chinese navy from entering the Pacific Ocean decades ago, but now Japan cannot stop China anymore and had to admit the strait is for public use, according to Jiang.
However, Japan has been enhancing the military monitoring on their islands along the strait, and using media to promote the “China threat theory” to support Japan’s military expansion, Jiang said.
“China’s regular voyage training is a part of the development plan to enlarge the combat range of the military force, which aims to maintain the regional peace and stability,” Jiang noted.
Different types of Chinese naval planes, including bombers, fighters and airborne early warning aircrafts, joined a naval fleet to conduct a drill after sailing through the Miyako Strait toward the West Pacific in March, ecns.cn reported.
According to a Joint Staff press release of the Japanese defense ministry in December 2016, Japan said they spotted seven Chinese naval ships accompanying the Liaoning, China’s aircraft carrier and that the fleet had passed the Miyako Strait. It said there are three destroyers, three frigates and one supply ship.
The Miyako Strait is between Japan’s islands of Miyako and Okinawa, to the northeast of the island of Taiwan.