An unmanned Chinese military aircraft approached the coast of Vietnam last week with a tracking device on, Reuters reported, citing a South Chinese monitoring group sea.
This is the first case in the five years since the surveillance in question has been carried out in the region, where Beijing has so demonstratively conducted such an operation, the agency notes.
Friday's flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle "W Zet 10" (WZ-10) started from Hainan Island, and the drone returned there after traveling about 100 kilometers along the Vietnamese coast to the southern city of Nha Trang, according to a graphic of its movement seen by Reuters and released by Van Pham, the general manager of the monitoring organization "South China Sea Chronicle Initiative" (South China Sea Chronicle Initiative), which uses publicly available GPS data.
It is not clear whether similar flights have been carried out before without the devices' tracker turned on, Reuters points out.
The practice of turning off the tracking device has been used frequently by Chinese aircraft and vessels when entering the exclusive economic zones of neighboring countries, a body of water up to 370 kilometers (200 nautical miles) from China's coast. Such movement is in most cases allowed by international law without the need for prior authorization, although it is often closely monitored, notes Reuters.
According to Pham, other observers who have long followed the movement in the South China Sea have confirmed to her that China is indeed conducting its first visible operation. The flight came days after Hanoi announced it would conduct its first joint coast guard exercises with the Philippines. They should start on August 9.
The Chinese operation also comes at a delicate political moment for Vietnam, where a number of changes have recently taken place at the highest levels of power, Reuters notes. President To Lam was elected on Saturday as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam.