By Oyintari Ben
The first joint military drills between China and Singapore since 2021 will take place this week as Beijing strengthens its defence and security ties with Southeast Asia, a region where the United States already has significant partnerships.
On Monday, the Chinese defence ministry announced on its website that the Chinese navy would send a mine-hunting ship, the Chibi, and a missile-bearing frigate, the Yulin, to the combined maritime exercise, which will take place from late April to early May.
Following the upgrade of a bilateral defence agreement in 2019 to include larger-scale exercises among their army, navy, and air force. China and Singapore conducted a joint military practice in international waters at the southern edge of the South China Sea two years ago.
Deeper military ties between China and Singapore come at a time of rising hostilities in the South China Sea, which spans 3.5 million square kilometres (1.4 million square miles) and is frequently travelled by Western fleets, including U.S. ships engaged in freedom of navigation operations. Such clauses irritate China, which asserts sovereignty over almost the entirety of the South China Sea despite an international court judgement to the contrary.
In an enlarged Super Garuda Shield exercise with Indonesia performed in August of last year, the U.S. military included Singapore, Japan, and Australia for the first time.
At about the same time, China dispatched fighter bombers to Thailand for joint air force exercises known as Falcon Strike 2022. Both nations claim that the exercises, which took place in northeast Thailand close to the Laos border, were defensive in character.
The drills last summer also occurred against the backdrop of heightened hostilities in the Taiwan Strait following Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, a democratically run island that China claims as its own.
The influence that the United States has shaped with nations like Singapore and Indonesia in the following years is projected to be challenged by China’s rising military presence in Southeast Asia.
