China's first aircraft carrier will carry out drills in the Western Pacific, in what the navy called part of routine exercises, amid renewed tension over self-ruled Taiwan that Beijing claims as its own. The navy said in a statement late on Saturday the Liaoning, along with its accompanying fleet, would conduct "exercises far out at sea", without giving details of the location or route, in what is likely its first blue-water drill far from home waters.
"This exercise is being carried out in accordance with annual exercise plans," the navy said in a statement also carried on the front page of the official People's Liberation Army Daily.
China's successful operation of the Liaoning is the first step in what state media and some military experts say will be the deployment of domestically built carriers by 2020.
Taiwan's defence ministry said on Sunday it had been monitoring the drills closely as the Liaoning went through the Miyako Strait, a body of water between the Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa, heading into the Pacific.
It said it was monitoring whether the aircraft carrier would continue into the Bashi Channel, which lies between Taiwan and the Philippines, on its return.
The Japanese Defence Ministry said on Sunday evening that a Maritime Self Defence Force ship and a P3C patrol airplane had spotted six Chinese naval vessels including Liaoning travelling through the passage between Miyako and Okinawa and into the Pacific.
There was no territorial incursion, the ministry said.
One Z-9 patrol helicopter that took off from a Chinese frigate flew near Miyako Island, prompting the scrambling of Japanese jet fighters, said the Japanese Defence Ministry.
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