China test-launched a long-range ballistic missile Monday from a nuclear submarine in the South Pacific in a rare demonstration of strength.
“The test launch complies with international law and international practice, and is not directed at any specific country or target,” the Chinese navy said, according to the state-run news agency, Xinhua. It also reported that “relevant countries” had been notified in advance.
The dummy warhead “landed precisely within the designated waters,” Xinhua said, meaning that it was consistent with the area previously identified to those relevant parties.
Read More: How Hormuz Could Shape China’s Taiwan Strategy
Despite prior notification, the response from neighboring nations was one of heightened alarm.
Winston Peters, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, said in a statement that the test was an “unwelcome and concerning development.”
“We, like our neighbors in other Pacific countries, have no interest in China using the South Pacific as a testing site for missile capability,” he said.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara criticized China at a press conference in Tokyo, saying it is “continuously increasing its defense spending at a high rate without sufficient transparency and expanding its nuclear missile capabilities, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, rapidly and extensively.”
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, said the test was “destabilizing” for the region.
Xinhua called Monday’s exercise a “routine arrangement of the annual training” of the navy, but its long-range ballistic missile tests are rare. The most recent was two years prior; before that, it had been about four decades.
A Pentagon analysis of the 2024 missile test said it was “probably to practice a wartime nuclear deterrence operation during peacetime and validate its ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to full range.”
American officials have long been concerned that China’s military buildup could come to a head in a conflict over Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as a territory. Tensions in the Pacific have recently heightened over the potential of war, especially because China has increased military exercises near the island.
The Chinese government did not specify what missile was being tested Monday, but military experts say that it was likely a JL-2 or JL-3, both of which were displayed at a military parade last year in Beijing. The latter missile has a range of over 6,000 miles (10,000 km), meaning that it could be launched from Chinese coastal waters and hit parts of the continental United States.
The post ‘Unwelcome and Concerning’: China’s Missile Test Is Putting the Pacific on Edge appeared first on TIME.
