The head of Britain’s armed forces has been warned by China that the dispatch of a Royal Navy aircraft carrier through east Asia risks causing a “severe situation” at a time of heightened military tension over Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
The message was delivered to Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, by the head of the Chinese delegation at a gathering of defence officials and military officers in Singapore. Commenting on the deployment of the HMS Prince of Wales, Rear-Admiral Hu Gangfeng said that naval forces dispatched far from home “take quite a risk”.
Sitting beside Radakin during the Shangri-La Dialogue, he said, “It may cause misunderstanding, miscalculation or even friction. Logically, if you send your military force there [overseas] the risk will definitely increase. You may not have expected these things to happen. But if your military power is too strong, there is a risk.”
More than 3,000 sailors and air force personnel are taking part in the eight-month deployment of the Prince of Wales — which is due to arrive in Singapore this month before sailing on to conduct exercises and port visits with countries including Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the US.
Royal Navy ships previously deployed to Asia have conducted “freedom of navigation operations”, intended to assert the right to free passage through international waters in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
“The principles of the freedom of navigation in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the English Channel,” Radakin said during the Shangri-La Dialogue, organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
However, such operations infuriate China, which claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea and the self-ruling island of Taiwan. US naval vessels that have passed through such waters have been angrily confronted by Chinese naval vessels broadcasting aggressive warnings.
Previous US governments welcomed such deployments, but the Trump administration is also questioning them. Radakin rejected suggestions this weekend by Pete Hegseth, the American defence secretary, that Nato armed forces should concentrate on Europe and leave security in Asia to the US .
“We would much prefer that the overwhelming balance of European investment be on that continent,” Hegseth said in Singapore. “We’re able to use our comparative advantage as an Indo-Pacific nation to support our partners here.”
Radakin argued that Britain’s trading, diplomatic and cultural interests in east Asia make it essential that it also shows a military presence in the region.
“Nato will always be our foremost commitment, but our national interests do not stop at the Suez Canal,” he said, sitting on a panel alongside Hu. “There’s no such thing as regional security these days — there’s only global security.”
He added: “The [UK] government’s highest priority is economic growth, and therefore in a region that has 40 per cent of the world’s GDP, and [for] a country that is … fortunate to have a whole raft of partners and allies in this part of the world, I’ve got instructions from a government … which expects the UK to be in the Indo-Pacific.”
The dispatch of the British carrier was welcomed by the defence minister of the Philippines Gilberto Teodoro. The Philippines is struggling to supply and protect remote, but strategic, islets in the South China Sea that are increasingly menaced by Chinese government vessels.
“It helps because it shows the interdependence of regions, interdependence of supply chains,” Teodoro told The Times. “A British ship going to the Indo-Pacific is a symbol that [Britain] recognises who the threat is here … it’s a question of global solidarity to call out bad actors, miscreants.”
Beijing angrily denounced Hegseth after he warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan may be imminent. “Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation, vilified China with defamatory allegations and falsely called China a ‘threat’,” the Chinese ministry said in a statement.
“The United States has deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea and kept stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific, which are turning the region into a powder keg.”
