The US has sent two aircraft carriers, USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz, to the disputed South China Sea for military exercises starting on Saturday – overlapping with drills China is holding in the region. These drills are some of the US Navy’s biggest in recent years, and it is rare for major US and Chinese military exercises to take place in the same region at the same time. Collin Koh, a Research Fellow with the RSIS in Singapore, said the risk of escalation remained low as both sides would refrain from “coming to blows”. “At present, China is still trying to recover economically from the pandemic, and while the recent national security law might have given some hope to Beijing that it could soon have one less domestic thorn in the flesh to worry about, it’s by no means all rosy in the foreseeable future,” he said.