Since 2017, UK defense officials have been saying the carrier's first deployment would include Asia and the Pacific on a route from Britain that would likely take it through the South China Sea.
"The UK is a global power with truly global interest ... we must be prepared to compete for our interests and our values far, far from home," then-UK Defense Minister Gavin Williamson said in 2019.
Britons flock to see largest aircraft carrier (2017).
The carrier would take its contingent of state-of-the-art F-35 stealth fighter jets into a region where "China is developing its modern military capability and its commercial power," Williamson said in an address to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.
But the presence of any foreign warships in the South China Sea is frowned upon by China. Beijing claims almost all of the 3.3 million square kilometer (1.3 million square mile) South China Sea as its territory.
Even ahead of Monday's Royal Navy readiness announcement, Chinese military officials were warning London against interfering in the region.
"We believe the South China Sea should not become a battleground for big power competition, or a sea full of roaming warships," Senior Col. Tan Kefei, a spokesman for China's Defense Ministry, said at a December 31 news briefing reported by the state-run Xinhua media agency in a posting on the Chinese military's official English website.
Foreign powers sending their warships to the South China Sea, where China has built military bases on man-made islands, were behind the "militarizaiton" of the waterway, Tan said.
"The Chinese military will take necessary measures to protect national sovereignty, security, and its developmental interests, as well as safeguard peace and stability in the region," he said.
