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"Chinese warships trained weapons on Japan's SDF aircraft: Pentagon"
Kyodo News ^ | 05/24/06

Posted on 05/23/2006 9:49:13 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

Wednesday May 24, 9:44 AM

Chinese warships trained weapons on Japan's SDF aircraft: Pentagon

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "(Kyodo) _ Chinese warships trained weapons on Japanese surveillance aircraft monitoring a disputed Chinese gas field in the East China Sea in a weapons drill last fall, the U.S. Defense Department said Tuesday in an annual report on China's military capabilities.

The Pentagon said in the 50-page report that the incident was one of the key developments over the past year underscoring China's continuing activities to build up and modernize its military beyond its interests over Taiwan to secure its interests deeper into the Pacific.

The Chinese military expansion and modernization "is already such as to alter regional military balances," and has become a "credible threat to modern militaries operating in the region," the Pentagon said, reiterating concern expressed in past reports over opaque Chinese activities.

According to Japanese government sources last October, a Chinese military vessel pointed a gun at a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force PC-3 surveillance plane in early September near the site of the Chinese Chunxiao gas field, the subject of a dispute with Japan.

The ship -- a missile frigate -- was one of the five Chinese naval vessels spotted by the MSDF aircraft, and it pointed a 100-milimeter coaxial gun placed at its bow toward the plane, the sources said, calling it an act of intimidation.

But the Pentagon report said Chinese Navy vessels "trained their weapons" on the aircraft last fall as part of a drill. ADVERTISEMENT

The report did not give any other details, but said the incident caused China-Japan tensions in the East China Sea stemming from Chinese resource concerns to flare."