SpaceWar.com reports: “China’s two aircraft carriers will be deployed in August near Taiwanese waters for military exercises, according to reports.

The aircraft carriers Liaoning and Shandong will be deployed together in the Yellow Sea’s Bohai Bay for combat readiness drills which could include a simulation of a future assault on Taiwan’s Dongsha, or Pratas, Islands, according to the Global Times, Taiwan News and reports from Australia.

The islands consist of three atolls controlled by Taiwan.

China has claimed all of the South China Sea as its own, despite competing claims from countries in the region.

‘The United States has a strong interest in preventing China from asserting control over the South China Sea,’ a report by the non-governmental organization U. S. Council on Foreign Relations said last week.

‘Maintaining free and open access to this waterway is not only important for economic reasons, but also to uphold the global norm of freedom of navigation,’ the report said. ‘The United States is also at risk of being drawn into a military conflict with China in this region as a result of U.S. defense treaty obligations to at least one of the claimants to the contested territory, the Philippines.’…”