The Chinese military sent naval and air forces for ¡°joint combat readiness patrols¡± in the waters and airspace of the East China Sea on Saturday, a day after a Japanese warship transited the Taiwan Strait.
The exercises were ¡°a routine arrangement organized in accordance with the annual plan, aiming at testing the joint operations capabilities,¡± Senior Col. Xu Chenghua, a spokesperson for the Chinese military¡¯s Eastern Theater Command, said in a statement.?
Xu said the Eastern Theater Command ¡°will routinely organize relevant military operations based on the need of the security situation, and safeguard state sovereignty and security as well as regional peace and stability.¡±
Also Saturday, the China Military Bugle, an official press account of China¡¯s armed forces, posted a video on X showing drone-captured footage of Eastern Theater Command naval and air forces monitoring the movement of the Maritime Self-Defense Force¡¯s Ikazuchi destroyer sailing in the Taiwan Strait on Friday.
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¡ª China Military Bugle (@ChinaMilBugle)
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The account also released a poster depicting a Chinese hammer about to hit an MSDF warship being piloted by a skeleton wearing an Imperial Japanese Navy uniform.???
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters at a regular press briefing Friday that Beijing had monitored the vessel throughout its transit from around 4 a.m. to 5:50 p.m., saying that Japan had used the move to ¡°flex its military muscle and deliberately provoke trouble.¡±
The Defense Ministry in Tokyo declined to comment on the claim. The MSDF was first reported to have sent a vessel through the strait in 2024, and conducted two more transits in 2025, according to local media.
Ties between Japan and China have plummeted to the lowest point in decades following Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi¡¯s remarks in parliament on Nov. 7 that the Self-Defense Forces could be deployed under the right to collective self-defense in ¡°worst-case¡± scenarios, such as a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan, which the prime minister said would constitute a ¡°survival-threatening situation¡± for Japan.
The comments, the first by a sitting prime minister to detail a specific case of how Tokyo might respond to a Taiwan Strait crisis, triggered outrage in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its own and has vowed to bring the democratic island under its control, by force if necessary.
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