Chinese naval vessels off the Horn of Africa allegedly failed to respond to a distress call from an Israeli-owned tanker that came under attack by Somali pirates on Sunday, according to the Pentagon.
The Liberian-flagged commercial vessel Central Park, which later appeared to be targeted by missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, put out an SOS call in the Gulf of Aden. The United States and an unnamed ally—reported as Japan—intervened, according to the U.S. Central Command.
The presence of at least three People’s Liberation Army Navy ships in the area was confirmed on Monday by the U.S. Defense Department’s press secretary, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, who said the vessels “did not respond.”
“Supposedly, those ships are there as part of a counter-piracy mission, but they did not respond,” Ryder said.
China’s Defense Ministry couldn’t be reached for comment before publication and has yet to issue a public statement on the matter.
The PLA Navy has dispatched warships and support vessels to the Horn of Africa for 15 years as part of its effort to safeguard commercial shipping lanes that are vital to the Chinese economy. China has operated a naval base in Djibouti since 2017 to aid its counter-piracy operations.
Wu Qian, China’s Defense Ministry spokesperson, told reporters in late October that two squadrons of Chinese warships arrived in the Gulf of Aden off Somali waters for an escort mission.
The Chinese navy’s alleged non-action over the weekend could raise questions about its responsibilities in international waters, but also the capacity of its forces to respond in a contingency.
CENTCOM’s statement on Monday said the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mason thwarted the previous day’s suspected Somali pirate attack on the Central Park with the help of “allied ships from our coalition counter-piracy task force.”
“Upon arrival, coalition elements demanded release of the vessel. Subsequently, five armed individuals debarked the ship and attempted to flee via their small boat,” CENTCOM said, adding that the assailants later surrendered to the Mason.
Further complicating the matter, in the early hours of November 27, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels fired two ballistic missiles toward the ships from Yemen, CENTCOM said. Both projectiles are said to have missed the ship.
Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP via Getty
In an X thread on Monday, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News, citing a senior U.S. official, said the crew of the Central Park had locked themselves in the ship’s safe room while the Somali gunmen tried to beat down the door before the Mason‘s arrival, accompanied by a Japanese destroyer.
Ryder, the Pentagon spokesperson, said that, under international maritime norms and laws, “if there’s a vessel that’s hailing a distress signal, then all vessels in the vicinity are required to come and help and support.”
The Central Park is owned by London-based Zodiac Maritime, part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group. It said on Monday that the tanker’s 22 crew members were unharmed thanks to the coalition’s intervention.
Expert commentators on X, formerly Twitter, were critical of the PLA’s alleged inaction.
“If true, it makes Beijing’s repeated claims of exercising so-called major power responsibilities and wanting to play a greater role in international security for the public good ring hollow,” said Collin Koh, a maritime security expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst and now a political scientist at King University in Tennesee, said: “So the Chinese want to pretend to have global power without actually exerting any.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.