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The United States Navy and Marine Corps have launched joint war games in the South China Sea amid heightened tensions with Beijing over a suspected Chinese “surveillance” balloon shot down by US fighter jets.
The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group along with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit are presently conducting “integrated expeditionary strike force operations” in the South China Sea, the Japan-based 7th Fleet said in a statement.
It said the exercises, involving ships, ground forces and aircraft, took place Saturday but divulged no details on when they kicked off or whether they ended.
The 7th Fleet further said the joint operation had “established a powerful presence in the region, which supports peace and stability.”
“As a ready response force, we underpin a broad spectrum of missions including landing Marines ashore, humanitarian disaster relief, and deterring potential adversaries through visible and present combat power,” read the press release.
China has consistently opposed military activity by other countries in the strategic waterway through which $5 trillion in goods are shipped yearly. However, defying the Chinese warnings, Washington continues to send ships to the waterway, prompting protests from Beijing.
The latest war games come as already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing have worsened amid the balloon row, with both sides trading barbs.
Last weekend, a US military fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina, a week after it first entered US airspace.
The US claimed the unmanned balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals, but Beijing insisted that the airship was used for meteorological and other scientific purposes and had strayed into US airspace “completely accidentally”
The incident prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a previously-scheduled visit to Beijing abruptly.
