Chinese aircraft carrier flotilla 300 km from Japan

From our correspondent

NEW DELHI - A little over a week after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth raised the alarm over the 'real' and potentially 'imminent' risk of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Japan's military leadership has reported the presence of a Beijing aircraft carrier in an area of the Pacific Ocean never before reached by People's Liberation Army Navy vessels. According to a statement by the Japanese Joint Chief of Staff, over the weekend, the Liaoning and three support ships carried out a series of exercises, including the take-off and landing of fighters and helicopters, about 300 kilometres southwest of the Japanese atoll of Minamitorishima.

Never before had one of China's three aircraft carriers ventured so far out to sea in the Pacific Ocean, crossing the second of two island chains that, with their American and non-US bases, act as a containment of Beijing's ability to project its military might into the Pacific Ocean. The first chain, the one furthest from the mainland, includes Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia, while the second connects Japan with Micronesia, passing through a series of small archipelagos, including the islands of Iwo Jima and Guam.

The deployment of the Liaoning carrier strike group in an area so far from the Chinese coast is considered significant because in the event of a conflict between Beijing and Taipei, a major threat to the Chinese Navy would be the arrival of US forces stationed in the Hawaiian Islands. The area of the Pacific Ocean where the weekend exercises took place is on the route connecting these US bases with Taiwan, and in the event of a conflict, for Beijing the ability to prevent or slow down the arrival of American ships would be crucial.

That said, according to the trade press, the Liaoning would have technical limitations that would make it better suited to challenge the navies of countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam than the US. It is a ship conceived in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s as a Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier that was far from being completed when the USSR collapsed in 1991. Sold many years later by Ukraine to a Hong Kong businessman, it only entered service in 2012.