China and Singapore are to hold a joint military exercise as soon as this week, their first combined drills since 2021, as Beijing deepens its defense and security ties with Southeast Asia, a region with strong existing US alliances.
The Chinese navy is to deploy a missile-bearing frigate, the Yulin, and a mine-hunting ship, the Chibi, to the joint maritime exercise which is to last from this month to early next month, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said in a statement on its Web site yesterday, without specifying the location.
China and Singapore two years ago held a combined military drill in international waters at the southern tip of the South China Sea, following the upgrade of a bilateral defense pact in 2019 to include larger-scale exercises among their army, navy and air force.
Photo: Ma Yubin / Xinhua via AP
The deeper China-Singapore military cooperation comes at a time of heightened tensions in the South China Sea, an area spanning 3.5 million square kilometers that is often traversed by Western navies, including US vessels conducting freedom of navigation operations. Such passages annoy China, which lays claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, despite an international ruling to the contrary.
The US military in August last year conducted an expanded Super Garuda Shield exercise with Indonesia that saw the participation of Singapore, Japan and Australia for the first time.
At about the same time, China sent fighter-bombers to Thailand in joint air force drills code-named Falcon Strike 2022.
Both nations said the exercises, in northeast Thailand near the border with Laos, were defensive in nature.
The drills last summer also took place against the backdrop of elevated tensions in the Taiwan Strait following the visit of then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi.
China’s increased military engagement in Southeast Asia is widely expected to challenge the influence that the US has shaped with nations such as Singapore and Indonesia.
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