Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that Germany will send two warships to the Indo-Pacific in 2024 amid escalating tensions between China and Taiwan over the South China Sea.
At Asia’s top security conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Pistorius said countries must defend the rules-based international order and critical maritime passageways.
“To this end, the German Federal Government sent a frigate to the Indo-Pacific in 2021, and will again, in 2024, deploy maritime assets – this time a frigate and a supply ship – to the region,” he said, according to a Berlin defense ministry speech script.
He also said the deployments were not aimed against China.
“To the contrary: They are dedicated to the protection of the rules-based international order that we all signed up to and which we should benefit from – be it in the Mediterranean, Bay of Bengal, or South China Sea.”
Germany, China’s biggest trading partner, is balancing security and commercial objectives by increasing its military presence in the region.
In 2021, a German warship entered the South China Sea for the first time in almost 20 years, joining other Western nations in increasing their military presence in the region amid growing concern about China’s territorial ambitions.
China claims practically the entire South China Sea, despite an international tribunal judgment that Beijing has no legal basis for these claims and has established military installations on manmade islands in the waters that contain gas deposits and lucrative fishery.
Europe’s South China Sea commerce accounts for 40%.
