Chinese Warships Put On Show of Force in South Pacific

One of the newest Chinese warships on Monday arrived in Vanuatu, an island country in the South Pacific Ocean, as China continued to expand its strategic footprint in the region.

Pacific Defence Monitor, which tracks regional defense and security developments in the Pacific Ocean, reported the arrival of the Chinese Type 055 destroyer CNS Xianyang and the Type 052DL destroyer CNS Nanning at Port Vila, the capital and largest city of Vanuatu.

“China is engaging in a new military show of force in the South Pacific” as it deployed a long-range surface combatant to the region, said Anne-Marie Brady, a political science and international relations professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

This is the first known deployment of a Type 055 destroyer to the South Pacific Ocean, which had the first ship of the class commissioned in 2020. The Xianyang is the eighth Type 055 warship serving the Chinese navy, as it was put into service since March last year.

This port of call came as China extended its military reach in the Pacific Ocean. Its navy, the biggest in the world by hull count with over 370 vessels, continued to challenge the United States’ naval dominance in both the Western and southern parts of the ocean.

Vanuatu is located between the second and third island chains. The former stretches from Japan through the Marianas and Micronesia to New Guinea, while the latter starts at the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and extends south to New Zealand via the Hawaiian Islands.

Both of them, together with the first island chain that links Japan and the Philippines via Taiwan, form a U.S. maritime defense concept to leverage allied or friendly territories in the region to contain the Chinese navy in the wider Western Pacific Ocean.

The presence of a Type 055 destroyer in the South Pacific Ocean has caught attention. It is classified as the Renhai-class cruiser by the U.S. military and has a full load of displacement of 13,000 tons, which is larger than the 9,800-ton American Ticonderoga-class cruiser.

The Pentagon’s report on Chinese military power says each Type 055 destroyer has a large load out of armament. This is capable of carrying more than 100 pieces of weapons, including antiship, air defense, and land-attack missiles, as well as torpedoes.

The Type 055 destroyer is “equipped with the most advanced weapons and equipment,” the Chinese military said. The enhanced self-sufficiency enables it to conduct missions independently and serve as one of the warship escorts in the aircraft carrier taskforces.

Meanwhile, the Type 052DL destroyer is an upgraded variation of the original Type 052D destroyer, with an extended helicopter flight deck and a new anti-stealth radar, according to the Chinese state media. It is also armed with a variety of weapons, such as missiles.

Both the Xianyang and the Nanning are assigned to the Chinese Southern Theater Command’s navy, which has its headquarters at Zhanjiang, a city on the southern coast of China. The straight-line distance between Zhanjiang and Port Vila is over 4,700 miles.

Vanuatu, which has maintained diplomatic ties with Beijing since 1982, approved and accepted the warships’ visit as a “technical stop” for fuel, water, and food supplies, as well as crew rest, the Chinese embassy in Port Vila said in a statement to Pacific Defence Monitor.

China is not the only foreign country that has its warships visited Vanuatu. In September 2017, an American amphibious warship docked off the coast of Vanuatu for a visit. The U.S. Navy said this was part of its commitment to freedom of navigation in the region.