Undated file photo shows the Chinese navy's Liaoning aircraft-carrier formation conducting open-sea combat training. Photo:Xinhua

"Outrageously audacious! Japan actually simulated an attack on the Liaoning aircraft carrier," CCTV.com, is which under China Media Group, reported in a post on its official Sina Weibo on Saturday.

The post included a video, in which CCTV commentator Teng Jianqun said that Japan has always been tracking, monitoring, and photographing China's naval flotillas that sortie into the Western Pacific. Recently, there has been a major change in the Japanese side's harassment of PLA maritime formations — they are getting particularly close, Teng noted, according to the post. 

The CCTV.com post also said that as reported by Japanese media, Japan simultaneously executed a series of targeted simulation attacks. PLA vessels and aircraft were put on heightened alert, with orders to respond rapidly in the event of any escalation, according to the post.

Also on Saturday, CCTV News reported that China's domestically developed twin-engine heavy carrier-based fighter jet, the J-15T, has participated in the far-sea combat training of the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning in the South China Sea and Western Pacific.

On June 22, the Liaoning carrier group returned safely to its home port after completing more than 40 days of far-sea combat training. During the training exercise, the task force successively maneuvered across multiple maritime and airspace regions, including the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, planning and organizing integrated shore‑sea system-of-systems confrontation, carrier‑based aircraft tactical flight operations, formation search and rescue, and other subject drills, according to the CCTV News report on Saturday.  

At a press conference of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense (MND) on Thursday, a reporter noted that during the PLA Navy's Liaoning carrier strike group's deployment to the maritime and airspace regions of the South China Sea and the Western Pacific for open‑sea combat training, it was repeatedly subjected to malicious close‑approach harassment by Japanese vessels and aircraft, and some analysts have characterized this action as a provocative act by Japan deliberately hyping the "China threat."

Asked to comment on that, MND spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said that China has released information on the Liaoning carrier group's far-seas combat training and has published footage of our responses to Japanese vessels and aircraft approaching and harassing our formations.

"It's clear who is the threat and who is the provocateur. We urge the Japanese side to stop its dangerous acts of interfering with China's normal training activities," Zhang stated. 

Global Times