TOKYO: Japan this week confirmed that two Chinese aircraft carriers have operated together for the first time in the Pacific, fueling Tokyo’s concern about Beijing’s rapidly expanding military activity far beyond its borders.
Carriers are considered critical to projecting power at a distance. China routinely sends coast guard vessels, warships and warplanes to areas around the disputed East China Sea islands, but now it is going as far as what’s called the second-island chain that includes Guam — a US territory. A single Chinese carrier has ventured into the Pacific in the past, but never east of that chain until now.
Here’s what to know about the latest moves by China, which has the world’s largest navy numerically.
What happened?
Japan’s Defense Ministry said the two carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong, were seen separately but almost simultaneously operating near southern islands in the Pacific for the first time. Both operated in waters off Iwo Jima, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Tokyo, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Monday.
The Liaoning also sailed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone of Minamitorishima, the country’s easternmost island. There was no violation of Japanese territorial waters. Still, Nakatani said Japan has expressed “concern” to the Chinese embassy.
Both carriers had warplanes take off and land. Late Wednesday, Japan’s Defense Ministry said a Chinese J-15 fighter jet that took off from the Shandong on Saturday chased a Japanese P-3C aircraft on reconnaissance duty in the area and came within an “abnormally close distance” of 45 meters (50 yards).
The Chinese jet on Sunday crossed 900 meters (980 yards) in front of the Japanese P-3C, the ministry said, adding it has strongly requested China to take measures to prevent such an “abnormal approach” that could cause accidental collisions.
Why is Japan worried?
China’s military buildup and expanding area of activity have raised tensions in the region.
The Chinese carriers sailed past the first-island chain, the Pacific archipelago off the Asian mainland that includes Japan, Taiwan and part of the Philippines. The Liaoning reached farther to the second-island chain, a strategic line extending to Guam, showing China also can challenge Japan’s ally, the United States.
“China apparently aims to elevate its capability of the two aircraft carriers, and to advance its operational capability of the distant sea and airspace,” Nakatani said.
The defense minister vowed to further strengthen Japan’s air defense on remote islands.
Japan has been accelerating its military buildup especially since 2022, including counter-strike capability, with long-range cruise missiles as deterrence to China.
What does China want?
China’s navy on Tuesday confirmed the deployments, calling it part of routine training in the western Pacific “to test their capabilities in far seas protection and joint operations.” It said the deployment was in compliance with international laws and not targeted at any country.
China is pursuing a vast military modernization program including ambitions of a true “blue-water” naval force capable of operating at long ranges for extended periods.
Beijing has the world’s largest navy numerically but lags far behind the United States in its number of aircraft carriers. China has three, the US 11.
Washington’s numerical advantage allows it to keep a carrier, currently the USS George Washington, permanently forward-deployed to Japan.
The Pentagon has expressed concern over Beijing’s focus on building new carriers. Its latest report to Congress on Chinese defense developments noted that it “extends air defense coverage of deployed task groups beyond the range of land-based defenses, enabling operations farther from China’s shore.”
What are the carriers’ abilities?
The two Chinese carriers currently in the western Pacific employ the older “ski-jump” launch method for aircraft, with a ramp at the end of a short runway to assist planes taking off. China’s first carrier, the Liaoning, was a repurposed Soviet ship. The second, the Shandong, was built in China along the Soviet design.
Its third carrier, the Fujian, launched in 2022 and is undergoing final sea trials. It is expected to be operational later this year. It is locally designed and built and employs a more modern, electromagnetic-type launch system like those developed and used by the US
All three ships are conventionally powered, while all the US carriers are nuclear powered, giving them the ability to operate at much greater range and more power to run advanced systems.
Satellite imagery provided to The Associated Press last year indicated China is working on a nuclear propulsion system for its carriers.
Any other recent concerns?
In August, a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft violated Japan’s airspace off the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, and a Chinese survey ship violated Japanese territorial waters off another southern prefecture, Kagoshima. In September, the Liaoning and two destroyers sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni — just east of Taiwan — and nearby Iriomote, entering an area just outside Japan’s territorial waters where the country has some control over maritime traffic.
China routinely sends coast guard vessels and aircraft into waters and airspace surrounding the Japanese-controlled, disputed East China Sea islands to harass Japanese vessels in the area, forcing Japan to scramble jets.
Tokyo also worries about China’s increased joint military activities with Russia, including joint operations of warplanes or warships around northern and southwestern Japan in recent years.

JAKARTA: Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said on Wednesday that the Netherlands extracted as much as $31 trillion in wealth from Indonesia during more than 300 years of its colonial rule over the region.

Indonesia declared independence in 1945, following centuries of Dutch colonial exploitation that began at the end of the 16th century.

With the archipelago being its primary source of spices, the Dutch East India Co. established a virtual monopoly on the global spice trade, when nutmeg, cloves and pepper were considered the most expensive and luxurious spices in Europe.

Its profits were so vast that they made the Netherlands one of the wealthiest European powers in the 17th century.

Prabowo highlighted the impacts of the colonization of Indonesia in a speech at the opening of a defense exhibition in Jakarta.

“There was just one research from a few weeks back, which says that during the period of Dutch colonization, the Netherlands took away $31 trillion of our wealth,” he said, but did not reference the quoted study.

“When the Dutch occupied Indonesia, the Netherlands enjoyed having the world’s top GDP per capita … (History) teaches us that if we had been able to protect our wealth, maybe our GDP would have been among the highest in the world.”

Prabowo, who formerly served as Indonesia’s defense minister before assuming the country’s top office, was making a case on the importance of defense spending.

“A nation that does not want to invest in its defense usually will experience their independence being stolen away, will experience the nation being subjugated to the will of others (and witness) the wealth of the nation being stolen — this is the lesson of humankind,” he said.

The period included schemes like the “Cultivation System” — locally known as the “Forced Planting System”— in Java, under which Indonesians were forced to grow export crops like coffee and sugar cane for the Dutch at the cost of their own livelihood and staple food crops to make significant profits for the colonial power. The system led to widespread famines on the island of Java.

According to a study by British historian and economist Angus Maddison, the Forced Planting System in Indonesia significantly drove up the Dutch state income, contributing to about 31.5 percent of its gross domestic product between 1851 and 1870.