In the week before June 11, 2017, a three-ship task force of the PLA Navy (PLAN), consisting of the Luyang II-class destroyer Changchun , the Jiangkai II-class frigate Jingzhou and the Fuchi-class oiler Chaohu, had been on the Indian Ocean phase of a six-month deployment. Scheduled to visit Sri Lanka, their planned goodwill stop quickly became a disaster relief effort and left well before a US Navy task force could arrive. The implications of the rapid presence of PLAN forces at the site of this disaster has been noted by the U.S. Navy. The PLAN task force that was on scene in Sri Lanka had sailed from China on 23 April, the 68th anniversary of the founding of the PLAN, with the intent to visit some 20 nations over six months. The planned port calls were to countries being courted as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expansive “One Belt, One Road” initiative, and PLAN port visits in Sri Lanka are widely seen as supporting China’s ongoing effort to secure long-term control of the port facility at Colombo.
|
