South China Sea Tensions: PLA Airforce Sends More Fighter Jets To Disputed Island

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held live-fire drills last week with its air force on Woody Island in the South China Sea after sending in more fighters to the base there, reports said.

The island, which China calls Yongxing, is part of the disputed Paracel archipelago and is equidistant from Da Nang on the east coast of Vietnam and China’s Hainan Island to the northeast.

The PLA exercises July 15-16 seem to be in response to increased activity by the U.S. in the region that included drills and freedom of navigation operations. The U.S also used two aircraft carrier strike groups, led by the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan, in dual exercises in the South China Sea for the second time in two weeks.

More than 3,000 missiles were fired at moving targets on the waters by the PLA’s Southern Theatre Command, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, citing a Sunday article by the state-run China National Radio. Photos posted on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV’s website and the SCMP showed JH-7 bombers and J-11B fighter jets. The J-11B are a Chinese variant of the Russian-made Su-27 Flanker fighter jets, broadly considered equivalent to the F-15 Eagle used by the U.S. Air Force.

The SCMP article also cited two military experts. First was Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping who said, “China has also developed another bomber, the J-16, which is more powerful than the JH-7. Large-scale naval drills in the South China Sea … will become a regular activity as tensions escalate between China and the US.”

The other expert was Zhou Chenming, a researcher with the Yuan Wang military science and technology institute in Beijing, who noted naval drills and high-altitude operations were a key part of the PLA’s combat-readiness training.

Up until last week, the U.S. had expressed disapproval of Chinese activities in the South China Sea but stopped short of calling them illegal. That changed when Beijing’s claims were formally rejected by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a press statement released July 13.

The tougher U.S. line ratcheted up already high tensions between the two superpowers and provided a catalyst for the PLA to conduct more frequent drills in the region.

China, Taiwan and Vietnam have claims based on historical sovereignty of the islands and the Philippines has a claim over part of the area under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The last time China used JH-7 bombers in live-fire drills was in 2016 when the U.S. expressed its support of the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that went in favor of the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands. Beijing continues its refusal to recognize the ruling, sticking to its claims based on the Nine-Dash line that appears on official Chinese maps and encloses much of the South China Sea within its tongue-shaped demarcation.