China has said it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) carrying a dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean.
The ICMB was launched at 08:44 local time (04:44 GMT) on Wednesday and "fell into expected sea areas", Beijing's defence ministry said, adding that the test launch was "routine" and part of its "annual training".
The type of missile and its flight path remained unclear, but Chinese state media said Beijing had "informed the countries concerned in advance".
Japan later said that it received "no notice" of the test launch.
China's nuclear weapon tests usually take place domestically, and it previously test-fired ICBMs west into the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region.
This is believed to be the first time since 1980 that it launched an ICBM into international waters.
"Unless I'm missing something, I think this is essentially the first time this has happened - and been announced as such - in a long time," Ankit Panda, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on X.
He added that Beijing's description of the test as "routine" and "annual" was odd, "given that they don't do this sort of thing either routinely or annually".
The Japanese government said on Wednesday that China had given it no prior notice of the ICBM launch.
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