China Navy Operating Off Coast of Alaska

This was a kind of show-of-force for President Obama, who was in Anchorage for his climate change summit earlier in the week.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Five Chinese Navy Ships Are Operating in Bering Sea off Alaska."

Also, "Chinese Navy Ships Came Within 12 Nautical Miles of US Coast":

Chinese navy ships off Alaska in recent days weren’t just operating in the area for the first time: They also came within 12 nautical miles of the coast, making a rare foray into U.S. territorial waters, according to the Pentagon.

Pentagon officials said late Thursday that the five Chinese navy ships had passed through U.S. territorial waters as they transited the Aleutian Islands, but said they had complied with international law and didn’t do anything threatening.

“This was a legal transit of U.S. territorial seas conducted in accordance with the Law of the Sea Convention,” said Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban.

U.S. officials said there was no known official communication to the U.S. from the ships.

The passage was seen as significant as Beijing has long objected to U.S. Navy vessels transiting its territorial waters or operating in international waters just outside.

China’s Defense Ministry confirmed that its navy ships had sailed to the Bering Sea for training after joint exercises with Russia in late August, but said the activity was routine and not aimed at any particular country.

U.S. officials said earlier that they were tracking the five ships in the area, where they hadn’t seen the Chinese navy operating before, but they didn’t say how close the ships had come to U.S. territory.

The foray, just as President Barack Obama was visiting Alaska, threw a fresh spotlight on China’s expanding naval power and ambitions on the eve of a lavish military parade in Beijing. It also came just three weeks before China’s President, Xi Jinping, begins a state visit to the U.S. already clouded by tensions over alleged cyberattacks on the U.S. and China’s island-building in the South China Sea.

The flotilla apparently traveled east from somewhere near Russia and entered the Bering Sea, navigating north of the Aleutian Islands before transiting south, where they undertook the “innocent passage” through U.S. waters between two islands, a defense official said.

That principle allows military ships to transit foreign territorial waters if they don’t conduct threatening activity. The Chinese didn’t give prior notification to the U.S. before doing so, but under international law, they don’t need to.

The Chinese don’t always acknowledge those laws, however, according to U.S. defense reports. For example, Beijing claims that U.S. warships should request permission before making their own “innocent passage” in Chinese territorial waters.

During fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the Pentagon challenged this notion, deploying U.S. naval ships through Chinese territorial waters without notifying Beijing first. According to those reports, the U.S. did not make the same challenge during fiscal 2014. There is no data available for the current fiscal year.

U.S. officials believe China is building a “blue-water” navy capable of operating far from its shores, while also developing missiles and other capabilities designed to prevent the U.S. Navy from intervening in a conflict in Asia.

Many of those capabilities, including a new antiship ballistic missile, were put on display for the first time on Thursday during the parade to mark the surrender of Japanese forces at the end of World War II.

Some U.S. military experts saw the Chinese transit through the Aleutians as a positive step, in that they had adhered to the “innocent passage” principle...

Well, China aspires to be the world's dominant power, the hegemon, and to do so it needs to challenge the U.S. All of this maneuvering off U.S. territory is par for the course. We should be really worried, however, when China begins to deploy more and greater military hardware than our side. We're not at that threshold, yet. See, for example, the U.S. Naval Institute, "Report: Chinese Develop Special "Kill Weapon" to Destroy U.S. Aircraft Carriers." And from just this week, at Free Beacon, "China Shows New intermediate-Range Missile Capable of Targeting Ships."