China hits out at Aukus pact after US submarine accident
- Beijing’s disarmament ambassador Li Song says the deal to provide Australia with US nuclear technology threatens to undermine regional peace and stability
- Diplomat also says recent accident involving USS Connecticut in South China Sea highlights risk from foreign vessels in the waters
“The enhanced trilateral security partnership, Aukus, is a product of a cold war mentality and narrow geopolitical concepts. And their cooperation on nuclear submarines is a textbook case of nuclear proliferation, which tramples on the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” said Li.
What is the Aukus alliance, and what does it have to do with China?
Li also said Aukus will also undermine the South Pacific and Southeast Asia nuclear-weapon-free zones, start a regional arms race, undermine regional unity and cooperation, and undermine regional peace and stability.
“The recent accident involving foreign nuclear submarines in the South China Sea further illustrates that foreign nuclear submarines that have travelled far and wide will only cause trouble, and will not be welcomed by countries and people in the region,” said Li.
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US submarine strikes unknown underwater object in disputed South China Sea
While the US has not disclosed details of the accident, a Beijing-based think tank said the accident probably happened in the afternoon of Oct 2 and identified a possible site for the collision south of the Chinese island of Hainan and north of the Paracels, an island chain claimed by both China and Vietnam.
“At about 10am on October 3, a suspected Seawolf-class submarine was found sailing around 48.7 nautical miles southeast of the Paracel Islands. Subsequent monitoring of the route showed that the submarine was heading for Guam,” Hu Bo, director of the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, told China Central Television’s military channel.
“We infer that the accident might happen in the afternoon or at night on Oct 2 … and the location of the accident was probably to the south of Hainan island and north of the Paracels, which is a very active region for US military operations in the South China Sea,” Hu said.
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He also said the sub’s activities may have been linked to an exercise in the Philippine Sea on October 4 that involved two US carrier strike groups led by the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Carl Vinson and suggested that it may have been monitoring the Chinese naval base in Hainan ahead of the exercise.
“If this US submarine was accompanying the US aircraft carriers and sailed around 300 to 500km ahead of them with the aim of monitoring a rival’s nuclear submarine port, in this sense we can imagine where this US submarine was,” said Hu.
