China gathers most powerful destroyers as US carrier group holds exercise off Korean peninsula

Four of the country’s most advanced Type 055 destroyers have been operating in the Yellow Sea near their home base

Meanwhile, US and Japanese forces conducted a training exercise following the most recent North Korean missile test

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The Lhasa, the second Type 055 destroyer to enter service with the PLA. Photo: Handout

Published: 11:00pm, 13 Apr 2022Updated: 12:01am, 14 Apr 2022

Four of China’s largest and most advanced destroyers have been spotted off the east coast of China as a US Navy carrier strike group is conducting an exercise with Japan near the Korean peninsula.

Chinese social media outlets, including the Weibo account Eagle Eye on Military Vision, published pictures of the four ships at sea, while HI Sutton, an analyst at US Naval Defence Intelligence News, identified them as four Chinese Type 055 Renhai-class guided-missile destroyers in waters near Qingdao, the headquarters of the North Sea Fleet.

The Type 055 is regarded as the second-most powerful destroyer after the US Navy’s Zumwalt-class stealth ship.

The pictures, taken by the European Union’s Copernicus network, came as the US and Japan held a joint drill in the Sea of Japan amid growing tensions over North Korea’s missile launches.

Zhou Chenming, a researcher from the Yuan Wang military science and technology think tank in Beijing, said the four Type 055 destroyers had been accompanying the country’s two aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and Shandong, as they returned to Dalian shipyard in Liaoning for maintenance.

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