China invited back to RIMPAC despite beefs

China has been invited to return to Rim of the Pacific exercises off Hawaii in the summer of 2018 despite a new round of challenges between the United States and the rising Asian nation in the East China and South China seas.

“All 26 nations that participated in RIMPAC 2016 have been invited to return for RIMPAC 2018,” Cmdr. Ryan Perry, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 3rd Fleet in San Diego, said in an email. “We are expecting China to take part in the initial planning conference scheduled for June.”

The Third Fleet plans the exercise. The biennial RIMPAC saw participation by 25,000 personnel, 45 ships, five submarines and more than 200 aircraft in July. The interoperability drills were held mostly in and around the Hawaiian Islands but also off Southern California.

The Chinese missile destroyer Xi’an, missile frigate Hengshui, supply ship Gaoyouhu, submarine rescue vessel Changdao and hospital ship Peace Ark were part of the big-ship contingent in Pearl Harbor and participated in at-sea drills, including gunfire, damage control and rescue, anti-piracy, search and rescue, and diving and submarine rescue.

Despite South China Sea provocations last year — with some lawmakers calling for China’s invitation to be rescinded — the U.S. military sees RIMPAC as a way to interact positively with China.

Adm. Scott Swift, head of U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in July at an opening event for RIMPAC that “inclusivity” is a tenet of the prestigious exercise, which has continued to grow in size.

In June, before the exercise kicked off, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said China was welcome to attend.

“These (exercises) are the sorts of things that bring us all together in sort of positive, constructive ways,” Richardson said at a Center for a New American Security event.

More recently, on May 17, a U.S. WC-135 Constant Phoenix radiation detection plane was intercepted by Chinese SU-30 jets in the East China Sea in international airspace. U.S. officials complained that one of the Chinese jets came too close.

On May 24 a Navy P-3 Orion was met in international airspace 150 miles southeast of China’s Hainan island by two Chinese J-10 fighters. The United States said one of the fighters made slow turns just 200 yards in front of the U.S. Navy plane.

The same day, the destroyer USS Dewey sailed nearby Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, an artificial island China has built up and one the United States does not recognize as Chinese territory. The “freedom of navigation operation” drew condemnation from China.