Mapped: How China Staged Double Aircraft Carrier Show of Force in Pacific
Japan on Monday issued an update on China's operational aircraft carriers-the Liaoning and Shandong-deployed simultaneously to the Western Pacific.
A Newsweek map based on the Japan Joint Staff report tracks the strike carrier groups' movements beyond the so-called First Island Chain, signaling Beijing's growing confidence in its blue-water naval capabilities.
The First Island Chain-a string of archipelagos including U.S. treaty allies Japan and the Philippines as well as U.S.-aligned Taiwan-is considered crucial to Washington's hopes of containing Chinese forces in the event of a war.
China continues to rapidly develop the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the world's largest by ship count. Security analyst Bryce Barros told Newsweek the joint deployment beyond the First Island Chain is a "milestone" that signals growing confidence in Beijing's power projection capabilities in a region long dominated by the U.S.
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry by email with a request for comment outside of office hours.
The Shandong and Liaoning were both operating beyond the First Island Chain back on June 7, according to Tokyo, which has been closely monitoring the deployments.
As of Monday, the Shandong-commissioned in 2019-and its support ships had sailed west through the strategic Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines and were heading south toward the South China Sea, where the carrier is homeported on China's Hainan Island.
The Liaoning, a refurbished former Soviet-era warship commissioned in 2012, sailed even farther, briefly venturing beyond what the U.S. considers its next Pacific line of defense-the Second Island Chain-on June 7 and June 8.
On Friday, the Liaoning transited the Miyako Strait-a key chokepoint in Japan's Ryukyu Islands-before entering the East China Sea that same day, apparently en route to its home port of Qingdao.
The Liaoning's aircraft conducted at least 440 takeoffs and landings between June 8 and Thursday, according to estimates by the Japan Joint Staff. The Shandong carried out at least 420 takeoffs and landings between June 9 and Monday.
During the Liaoning's operations in the Western Pacific, the carrier dispatched J-15 fighter jets to intercept four "foreign" fighters that were tracked approaching the carrier, in what the command room believed could be a simulated strike on the Chinese formation, state broadcaster China Central Television reported Sunday.
The J-15s, armed with live missiles, executed tactical maneuvers and drove away the foreign aircraft, according to the report.
The Chinese carrier groups' movements in recent days have coincided with a shift in Western naval power in the region, as the supercarrier USS Nimitz left the South China Sea for the Middle East amid escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.
Meanwhile, the British carrier HMS Prince of Wales arrived in Singapore on Monday to begin its eight-month deployment in the Indo-Pacific region.
Bryce Barros, a security fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Truman National Security Project, told Newsweek: "China's dual carrier deployment beyond the First Island Chain marks a symbolic and operational milestone, signaling growing confidence in projecting power toward the Second Island Chain.
"Still, [American aircraft carrier] USS George Washington, HMS Prince of Wales, and [amphibious assault ships] USS America and USS Tripoli remain in the region. The U.S. must reassure partners that it takes PLAN advances seriously-ensuring presence, posture, and partnership remain strong despite global distractions."
China's objectives in deploying both aircraft carriers remain unclear.
It is also uncertain whether U.S. and allied navies will respond in the Western Pacific amid Washington's deepening involvement in the Middle East conflict, sparked earlier this month by Israeli airstrikes against Iranian military and nuclear targets.
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Key US Ally Quietly Prepares for China's Pacific War With America
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Japan will begin building bomb shelters next year on its remote islands closest to Taiwan amid fears that its far western territory could become a legitimate target for Chinese missiles if China and the United States go to war. The plans point to a possible scenario in which Beijing orders preemptive strikes against major U.S. and allied bases in the Pacific before launching an amphibious invasion by sea and air across the Taiwan Strait to achieve what strategists call a fait accompli. They also acknowledge the complex reality that Japan—the U.S. treaty ally hosting the most American troops anywhere in the world outside of U.S. territory—will in all probability not avoid the spillover of a superpower conflict so near its shores. The Core of Core Issues The Communist Party claims democratically governed Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, despite Taipei's objections. China refuses to rule out the use of force to unify the island with the mainland, and a widening hard power imbalance across the Taiwan Strait is fueling concerns that Beijing could soon compel Taipei with the threat of a hot war. U.S. officials say Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his armies to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027. Whether the military capability will be matched by political intent cannot be known. Taiwan is a core issue in the U.S.-China relationship, Beijing's officials say. At Asia's top security forum in Singapore last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said China's military was "rehearsing for the real deal," and that an attack "could be imminent." Beijing accused him of trying to stoke confrontation. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taipei but is bound by U.S. law to arm Taiwan and assist in its self-defense. Former President Joe Biden suggested he was prepared to defend Taiwan with American forces. President Donald Trump has kept his cards closer to the vest. What is certain is that the United States likely cannot win a Pacific war against China without the help of Japan, whose vast territory of more than 14,000 islands spans 1,000 miles across the first and second island chains in the West Pacific. Japan's Self-Defense Force is among the world's most well-armed militaries thanks in part to historically strong heavy industry and U.S. export licenses for the production of platforms like the F-35 stealth jet and the future operation of weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile. And although Japan's constitution explicitly renounces the use of force, Tokyo's reinterpretation of the document in recent years may allow its military to perform collective self-defense alongside U.S. and allied forces, even if Japan itself is not attacked. The Plan The Japanese government will subsidize the construction of long-stay evacuation facilities in municipalities in the Sakishima archipelago at the end of its Nansei or southwest island chain, starting next year with the westernmost inhabited territory of Yonaguni, less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. More bomb shelters—equipped with facilities for stays of up to two weeks—will be built on the neighboring islands of Iriomote, Ishigaki, Tarama and Miyako by spring 2028, Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported this week. Left to right: Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the Yaeyama islands of Yonaguni, Iriomote and Ishigaki, part of the Sakishima archipelago in southwestern Japan. Left to right: Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the Yaeyama islands of Yonaguni, Iriomote and Ishigaki, part of the Sakishima archipelago in southwestern Japan. Copernicus Okinawa, the largest of Japan's southwestern islands, hosts around 30,000 of the 54,000 active-duty American service members in Japan. The U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps all operate bases on the Pacific node, with U.S.-Japan joint training exercises reaching all the way to Yonaguni. Officials in Tokyo plan to evacuate residents to the country's main islands long before hostilities begin. However, official estimates indicate sea and air evacuations of more than 100,000 civilians during a Taiwan Strait crisis could take nearly a week. The emergency shelters would act as a backstop to house up to 200 people who are left behind. The buildup to a possible major war is palpable to the islanders, who have expressed angst about being on the front line of what their government calls a "Taiwan contingency." "The plan is very detailed and I felt a strong sense of crisis in the remote border islands," Gen Nakatani, Japan's defense minister, said at a news conference in January while reviewing Yonaguni's evacuation measures. A Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-2 transport aircraft takes off at Miho Air Base in Sakaiminato in Japan's western Tottori prefecture on June 21, heading to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa for a possible... A Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-2 transport aircraft takes off at Miho Air Base in Sakaiminato in Japan's western Tottori prefecture on June 21, heading to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa for a possible evacuation of Japanese nationals from the Middle East. More Kyodo via AP The preparations are as necessary as they are uncomfortable; the worst-case planning does not presume a peaceful end to a decades-long dispute that in many ways resembles China's most formidable hurdle in its pursuit of true superpower status against a resistant United States. "China's military expansion in recent years and its attempts to unilaterally change the regional status quo have aroused a high degree of vigilance in democratic countries like Japan, the United States and in the European Union," Taiwan's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei told Newsweek. Taipei welcomes the international community's continued attention to the security situation in the Taiwan Strait and in the region, Hsiao said. The U.S. State Department referred Newsweek to the government of Japan, which did not respond to written requests for comment. China's Foreign Ministry also did not respond. The Fight Beijing's modern military is on the march, with ambitions of global supremacy that stretch far beyond Taiwan, to the Arctic and even to space. Intensive Chinese military activity in Taiwan's surrounding sea and airspace is now the norm, yet they increase still. Last year, Taipei tracked over 3,000 Chinese warplane sorties in its air defense zone, nearly double the figure recorded in each of the previous two years, according to PLATracker, a public dataset maintained by U.S. analysts Gerald C. Brown and Benjamin Lewis. Taiwan's own defense reforms have progressed steadily, but not fast enough for many of its supporters in the United States. The island's political, military and civic leaders, however, are applying lessons from Russia's war in Ukraine: how to win international support, how to use sea drones and HIMARS rocket launchers and how to resist. The U.S. and Japanese militaries have witnessed some of the biggest shifts in defense posture, both individually and collectively as an alliance. The Pentagon is overseeing a fundamental change in warfighting doctrine across the U.S. armed services as part of a pivot to the Indo-Pacific theater, where seas are wide, islands are many and continental land is scarce. In Japan, the larger of the Sakishima islands—Yonaguni, Miyako and Ishigaki—have each hosted new Japanese army bases in the last 10 years. On Yonaguni, whose population is only 1,500, a Patriot missile unit operates a battery of advanced PAC-3 interceptor systems, and long-range radar stations in the mountains watch Chinese forces daily. Japan's army on June 24 test-fires a Type 88 surface-to-ship short-range missile at the Shizunai Anti-Air Firing Range on Japan's northern main island of Hokkaido in its first missile test on Japanese territory. Japan's army on June 24 test-fires a Type 88 surface-to-ship short-range missile at the Shizunai Anti-Air Firing Range on Japan's northern main island of Hokkaido in its first missile test on Japanese territory. Japan Ground Self-Defense Force via AP This week, Japan's army conducted its first missile test on Japanese territory, firing a Type 88 short-range surface-to-ship missile on its northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Tokyo is also acquiring long-range counterstrike weapons—the U.S.-made Tomahawk and its own Type 12 missile—that can reach China's coast. Defense planners are not discounting the possibility that China could move on the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, around 100 miles north of the Sakishima group. U.S. and Japanese soldiers have trained together to retake Japan's remote islands from enemy forces and this year simulated anti-ship strikes on maritime choke points used by the Chinese navy. The U.S.-Japan alliance is open about the perceived China threat in ways that the U.S.-South Korea alliance cannot be. Seoul fears that a diversion of American strength from the Korean Peninsula could invite trouble at the Demilitarized Zone with Kim Jong Un's North. The Expert View Bryce Barros, nonresident associate fellow at the Bratislava-based Globsec group, told Newsweek: "The decision to publicize these preparations may also point to deeper coordination between Japan and Taiwan than is openly acknowledged. "More broadly, it raises important questions for other countries in the region. For example, I'd be curious to see what measures Filipino authorities are taking for islands in the Bashi Channel, which would also be on the frontline of any cross-strait crisis." Tsun-yen Wang, associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told Newsweek: "It should not be ruled out that those shelters may also be utilized for housing and aiding refugees fleeing from Taiwan. "The 'Taiwan refugees' concern was raised about two years ago, and discussion of this issue may well conjure up the Japanese people's memory of finding 'boat people' at the end of the Vietnam War." Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the island of Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited territory less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the island of Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited territory less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. Copernicus What Comes Next The Trump administration is prioritizing a strategy of "denial" to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby said in his confirmation hearing earlier this year. Unlike deterrence by punishment, which threatens consequences like economic sanctions, a strategy of denial seeks to convince an aggressor that its objectives are unobtainable, by making the likelihood of a catastrophic military defeat more credible. To achieve denial against a peer adversary like China, the United States may need to clearly signal a readiness to intervene, in what would be a test of the American public's appetite for more war. In a poll released by the Ronald Reagan Institute this month, seven in 10 Americans said they would support U.S. military action to defend Taiwan.
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Map Shows How Much Each NATO Member Contributes as Trump Touts Increase
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted a plan for NATO member states to raise defense spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) as a "monumental win" for the United States. The agreement addresses Trump's long-standing concern about NATO members not carrying their weight. Newsweek reached out to the alliance for comment via email. Why It Matters NATO leaders committed increasing their defense spending on Wednesday following pressure from Trump, who for years has raised concerns that the U.S. was paying more than its fair share of spending. Under the plan, nearly every country in the military alliance will increase investments to the 5 percent by 2035. Leaders wrote in a declaration that the agreement is reaffirmation to their "ironclad commitment to collective [defense] as enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty," which states that an attack on one NATO member shall be treated as an attack against all. The agreement was signed with a backdrop of a world dealing with crises. The yearslong war between Russia and Ukraine continues. World leaders have been trying, but struggling, for years to broker a deal to end the armed conflict. Meanwhile, tensions have flared up in the Middle East amid the battle between Iran and Israel, with Trump striking several Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Iran has since retaliated against U.S. military bases, and Trump has pushed for a ceasefire. What To Know The agreement means many NATO countries will be dramatically increasing their defense investments over the coming years, as many are far from the 5 percent mark. The declaration states that the spending must be on "core defense requirements" as well as "defense-and security-related spending." "Our investments will ensure we have the forces, capabilities, resources, infrastructure, warfighting readiness, and resilience needed to deter and defend in line with our three core tasks of deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security," the declaration reads. At the moment, Poland is the NATO member state spending the most per GDP on defense investments, according to the latest data from the alliance, at 4.12 percent. Estonia follows with 3.43 percent and the U.S. places third with 3.38 percent. Conversely, Belgium, Canada, Italy and Spain each spend less than 1.5 percent. Trump celebrated the declaration in remarks to reporters on Wednesday. President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25. President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25."In a very historic milestone this week, the NATO allies committed to dramatically increase their defense spending to that 5 percent of GDP, something that no one really thought was possible, and they said, 'You did it sir, you did it.' I don't know if I did it, but I think I did," Trump said. The president said it will add more than $1 trillion per year to common defense. "This is a monument, really, to victory. But it's a monumental win for the United States because we were carrying much more than our fair share." Spain Says It's Unable to Meet Spending Requirement, Sparks Trump's Ire Some NATO member states have expressed concerns about whether it is realistic to increase defense spending so much over the next decade. Spain has already said it will not be able to do so, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez describing the requirement as "unreasonable," the Associated Press (AP) reported. He announced a deal earlier this week that would allow Spain to remain part of NATO without having to increase defense spending to 5 percent of its GDP. "We must protect Europe. But we must also protect what makes it unique in the world: its welfare state and its commitment to diplomacy, development aid, and peace," he wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter. However, Trump expressed frustration. "I think Spain is terrible, what they've done. They're the only country that won't pay the full—they want to stay at 2 percent. I think it's terrible. And you know, they're doing very well. Their economy is doing very well. And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening," he said. He added that he could make Spain "pay twice as much" as he negotiates a trade deal with Madrid. What People Are Saying NATO leaders wrote in their declaration: "We reaffirm our shared commitment to rapidly expand transatlantic defense industrial cooperation and to harness emerging technology and the spirit of innovation to advance our collective security. We will work to eliminate defense trade barriers among Allies and will leverage our partnerships to promote defense industrial cooperation." United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, per the AP: "This is the moment to unite, for Europe to make a fundamental shift in its posture and for NATO to meet this challenge head-on." What Happens Next NATO members have until 2035 to increase their spending to comply with the declaration. How Trump's negotiations play out with Spain has yet to be seen.
