China test-fires missile into ‘high seas’ of Pacific

China test-fired an intercontinental ballistic rocket with a dummy warhead into “the precocious seas of the Pacific Ocean,” the country’s Ministry of National Defense reported Wednesday.

“The rocket fell into expected oversea areas,” the ministry stated successful a quality merchandise posted to its website. “This trial motorboat is simply a regular statement successful our yearly grooming plan. It is successful enactment with planetary instrumentality and planetary signifier and is not directed against immoderate state oregon target.”

China "informed the countries acrophobic successful advance," according to a abstracted Xinhua quality bureau report, which did not specify the missile’s way oregon wherever it landed successful the Pacific.

The motorboat "effectively tested the show of weapons and instrumentality and the grooming level of the troops, and achieved the expected goal," Xinhua reported.

In 1980, China launched an ICBM into the South Pacific, the Associated Press reported, noting that a representation published successful Chinese newspapers astatine the clip showed the people country arsenic astir a ellipse successful the halfway of a ringing formed by the Solomon Islands, Nauru, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, Fiji and the New Hebrides.

An expert told Agence France-Presse that China has typically conducted specified tests successful its ain airspace.

"This is highly antithetic and apt the archetypal clip successful decades that we've seen a trial similar this," Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow astatine the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.

The trial "likely speaks to China’s ongoing atomic modernization manifesting successful caller requirements for testing," helium added.

Taiwan's defence ministry said connected Wednesday it had detected 23 Chinese subject craft operating astir Taiwan, and besides precocious detected "intensive" Chinese rocket firing and different drills.

Taiwan has dispatched its ain aerial and naval forces to support watch, the ministry said.

Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was included successful this report.