India spotted Chinese Ships that appeared in a portion of the South China Sea (SCS) during the final day of a military drill with a flotilla of naval vessels from Southeast Asian countries as a part of the India-ASEAN maritime exercise 2023, as per an account by a Government official from Bloomberg.
The participating nations were: Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei, Indonesia and India.
The final day India-ASEAN exercise involved nine ships, six aircraft and over 1,800 personnel from across the grouping’s nations which were expected to trawl the international waters along the transit route to the Philippines.
The exercise occurred in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone when Chinese boats began moving towards them. However, the Chinese militia boats and naval vessels crossed each other without face-off, Indian sources told Reuters.
According to an official, who wished to be anonymous given the sensitivity of the issue, the Chinese Ships were spotted 100 nautical miles from the exercise area and were not from PLA Navy. Beijing did not formally warn the flotilla from the ASEAN countries.
The Indian contingent included INS Delhi and INS Satpura.
The defence ministries of India and Singapore have yet to respond to the request for comment, even though the Singapore Navy wrote in a Facebook post on the afternoon of May 8, 2023.
“AIME (ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise) was successfully and safely completed with the conclusion of the sea phase in international waters earlier on May 9, 2023,” it said. “The RSS Supreme (a naval stealth frigate of the Singapore Navy) will continue to transit to the Philippines and prepare for the upcoming ASEAN multilateral naval exercise.”
Worries regarding national security in the Asia-Pacific (now called Indo-Pacific) are rising, and countries are seeking to bolster their defences as the relations between China and the US struggle to find a floor.
The Military tensions between India and Beijing had also increased since 2020 when fierce fighting erupted on the Himalayan border in decades.
The abrupt perpendicular turn of the Chinese vessels into the path of the ASEAN-India maritime exercise was highly coincidental. Raymond Powell, who leads the Stanford University Project of Myoushu in the South China Sea, said whether it was directly related is unclear.
The ships involved in the ASEAN-Indian Maritime exercise were expected to track simulated vessels of interest and practise dealing with unplanned encounters to reduce the likelihood of miscalculations or accidents.
In an official statement, the US State Department said that in April 2023, the US called upon China to stop provocative and unsafe conduct in the South China Sea. It also added that it continues to track and monitor these interactions closely.
In April 2023, the Peoples Republic of China and the Philippines came close to collision in the South China Sea just as the ASEAN nations were participating in military exercises with the US.
China claims over 80 per cent of the South China Sea, from where one-third of the global maritime crude oil trade passes. A 2016 Arbitral Tribunal ruling in the Hague invalidated China’s claims.
