Nope Chinese access to west pacific is limited through few narrows strait that can be blocked by either position Submarine in those straits or mined them. Any surface ships that try to muscle it thru the straits will be targeted by anti ships missile from island close to those straits. Japan controlled most of those island from Miyako all the way to Ogashiwara. Chinese marine need to land on those island and eliminate any non friendly forces That is why I think the reason for those sudden expansion of LHD
For those effort you need large marine sofar Chinese marine only numbered 20,000 with 2nd hand equipment They have plan to increase it to 100,000 but that is decade long effort. Sofar all the exercise is limited to batallion strength they haven't even exercise in corp strength. The marine lack helicopter, landing ships, first class armor and missiles. Japan start putting missile on those island and form marine division to defend those island It will be formidable force for China to overcome it unless they take it seriously
Yup again I don't know what are they thinking.
And the enemy know that and so do PLAN that is why they exercise to pass those straits. Here excerpt from Andrew Erickson reading
Patterns of Chinese Naval Penetrations
After decades of hugging Chinese shorelines as a coastal-defense force, it only makes sense for the PLAN to practice the tactics, techniques and procedures needed to engage farther away from the Chinese seas in wartime. In light of Asia’s cramped maritime geography, it comes as little shock that Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) units routinely discover PLAN units cruising near Japanese islands. As of this writing, PLAN warships have entered and exited the East China Sea through Japanese-held narrow seas on at least six occasions since 2004. Three incidents were particularly noteworthy.
Tsugaru Strait – In October 2008, a surface action group led by a Sovremennyy-class destroyer steamed through the Tsugaru Strait (marking the first time PLAN units had essayed such a transit), circumnavigated Japan, and circled back to port by way of the international strait between Okinawa and the Miyako Islands (Asia Times, April 22).
Okinotorishima – In June 2009, a Chinese flotilla centered on a Luzhou-class guided-missile destroyer—a vessel armed with an advanced air defense system—voyaged to waters near Okinotorishima through the same maritime gateway (Asia Times, April 22).
Miyako Strait – In April 2010, the JMSDF destroyers Choukai and Suzunami unexpectedly encountered eight PLAN warships and two submarines in international waters southwest of Okinawa, near the Ryukyus. The Chinese squadron transited the Miyako Strait—evidently Chinese commanders’ passage of choice—before turning south toward Okinotorishima. The Japanese government lodged a diplomatic protest with Beijing, to little avail [1].
Though modest in scale compared to U.S. naval operations, these expeditions demonstrate the PLAN’s capacity to operate east of the Japanese archipelago while testifying to its growing reach in the Western Pacific. Recent Sino-Japanese encounters offer a foretaste of East Asia’s nautical future.
Unsurprisingly, China’s naval activities sounded alarms within the defense community in Tokyo. In its annual white papers, Japan’s Ministry of Defense has reported with increasing granularity on the character of PLA operations in or near Japanese waters. The 2009 issue for the first time included charts depicting the courses taken by China’s flotillas. The graphics revealed the patterns of Chinese naval penetrations through the southern Ryukyu chain [2]. According to the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), the Defense Ministry’s internal think-tank, “Given the noticeably greater amount of activity by Chinese naval vessels in the Pacific in recent years, it seems undeniable that China is envisaging operations between the so-called ‘first island chain’ (connecting the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan and the Philippines) and the ‘second island chain’ (connecting the Bonin Islands and Guam)” [3]. The NIDS researchers are onto something. The Japanese archipelago constitutes not only the northern segment of the first island chain but also the northern terminus of the second island chain, which meanders southward from northern Japan to Papua New Guinea. As PLA forces start operating between the inner and outer island chains, consequently, it will be increasingly commonplace for them to pass through Japanese-held straits and passages and cruise along Japan’s eastern maritime frontier.
Here is how they planned to bottle up Chinese navy inside first island
Inside forces: Below the level of armed conflict, inside forces forward postured in the Western Pacific would provide a persistent, combat credible signal of U.S. commitment, which should give Chinese leaders pause by complicating their decision calculus and undermining their confidence in their military plans. In the event of conflict, they would exploit the region’s maritime geography and assume a dispersed, resilient posture along the First Island Chain to form an initial defensive barrier that could immediately challenge Chinese military operations and play three key roles. First, they would contest what Chinese doctrine has
as necessary prerequisites for conducting a successful military campaign: air superiority, sea control, and information dominance. Second, they would attack Chinese power projection forces to delay and deny their ability to achieve objectives through aggression, such as seizing the territory of U.S. allies or partners, while blocking China from projecting power beyond the First Island Chain. Third, they would degrade key Chinese systems to create gaps in China’s A2/AD networks that outside forces could then exploit.
Mobile and dispersed ground forces—and amphibious forces ashore—would form the backbone of these inside forces. Leveraging the inherent survivability of mobile, hard-to-find ground forces augmented with counter-detection aids, such as camouflage, concealment, and deception (CCD), the inside forces would transform the First Island Chain’s archipelagos into defensive bastions bristling with multi-domain capabilities such as sensors, missiles, and electronic warfare systems. Undersea platforms, both manned and unmanned, could operate within or near the East China Sea and South China Sea to augment these island bastions as part of the inside forces.
