The Chinese continue to Flex their Muscle in the Southeast Asian Waters

A three-week patrol by a Chinese naval flotilla in Southeast Asian waters has drawn conflicting responses from regional governments, exposing confusion over how to react to China's rising maritime power. 

Torn between offending a key trading partner and standing up for their countries' sovereignty, some regional officials have denied that Chinese ships sailed close to their territory at all, despite Chinese government statements and state media reports to the contrary.

Two Chinese destroyers and one amphibious landing craft, which may have traveled with a submarine escort, according to security analysts, left southern China on Jan. 20. Chinese state media provided detailed coverage of the patrol, which pressed farther south than other Chinese naval missions have done in the past. 

That unusually wide geographic range led analysts to believe the mission was something more than a routine training exercise, as China's Ministry of Defense has claimed, and instead was designed as a demonstration of China's increasingly expansive naval reach.

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The Chinese vessels first conducted a patrol of the Paracel Islands, a South China Sea group contested by China and Vietnam, before proceeding to James Shoal, a reef some 50 miles off the coast of Malaysia in South China Sea areas claimed by both China and Malaysia. 

The flotilla then proceeded beyond waters claimed by Beijing to the Indian Ocean, where it conducted the first exercises by Chinese military vessels in waters south of Indonesia, before heading back north and holding live-fire drills in the Western Pacific. The ships returned to China on Feb. 11, after 23 days at sea.

China's Ministry of Defense said the training it conducted during the mission "was not directed at any country or region, and had no relation to the regional situation," adding, "China has freedom of navigation and other legitimate rights in the relevant waters." 

Indeed, there is no suggestion that the flotilla's actions transgressed international law. "China is well within its rights to conduct military exercises at sea, and that includes passage through international straits," said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

The U.S. has refrained from commenting specifically on the Chinese patrol. On Feb. 5, Daniel Russel, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, expressed concern during congressional testimony about a "pattern of behavior in the South China Sea" whereby China was seeking to assert control over disputed areas in ways that were "inconsistent with international law." Secretary of State John Kerry, during a five-day trip to Asia this month, cautioned China against taking steps at sea that could increase tensions with its neighbors, warning that misunderstandings could inadvertently lead to conflict, officials said.

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