Paul Joseph Watson
October 31, 2013
China has sent a surveillance ship to Hawaiian waters
for the very first time in an unprecedented move which is being
described as a provocative retaliation to the U.S. naval presence in the
East China Sea.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
According to a report by GoldSea.com,
a news outlet aimed at Asian-Americans, a 4,000 ton People’s Liberation
Army electronic reconnaissance ship was recently spotted near Hawaii
within the U.S. 200-nautical mile EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).
The report was also picked up by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which ran an article entitled China moves spy ship near isles, Asian media say.
The ship “is equipped with various electronic gear for
eavesdropping on radio communications and tracking ships and aircraft.
It is also believed to have jamming equipment to interfere with the
radio communications of other ships,” according to the report.
The development is unprecedented because China has never
sent a ship within the U.S. EEZ, although the U.S. has entered the
Chinese EEZ on numerous occasions for decades. It is not known whether
the ship violated the territorial waters of the United States, which
extend to 12 nautical miles under the 1982 UN convention on the Law of
the Sea.
The fact that the ship got within 2,400 miles of San
Francisco represents “a potential for offensive actions against the US
by the Chinese military,” according to the report.
The development is apparently part of China’s growing
military confidence, which was also exemplified with the country’s
recent declassification of its nuclear-armed Xia-class submarine fleet,
which according to state media represents an “assassin’s mace that would make adversaries tremble.”
China’s increasing aggressiveness in the East China Sea
and its challenge to Japanese control of the Senkaku Islands has sparked
tensions, with Japan repeatedly scrambling fighter jets earlier this week in response to Chinese military aircraft flying near Okinawa.
Back in September, China also reportedly sent warships to the coast of Syria to “observe” the actions of US and Russian vessels in the region.
“The recent deployment of a PLAN surveillance ship into
Hawaiian waters is seen as Beijing’s message to the US and the rest of
the world that China can now contest the waters of the western Pacific
and that the US Navy no longer has a free pass in the region. It is also
seen as a form of retaliation for what Beijing considers the
provocative naval exercises the US recently conducted in the Yellow Sea
jointly with the navies of South Korea and Japan’s Self-Defense Force,”
states the report.
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