China’s navy said on Wednesday that it tracked and warned a US ship passing through the Taiwan Strait, a mission that came after China conducted exercises near the island.
According to the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, the guided-missile cruiser USS Port Royal on Tuesday carried out “regular” Taiwan Strait crossings by international waterways “in accordance with international law”, the second such operation in two weeks. The US is completing several operations in less than a month, angering China, which sees them as a sign of support for Taiwan, a democratically governed island that Beijing claims as Chinese territory does.
The Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army said in a news release that its forces were constantly monitoring the ship and had “warned” it.
“The US often produces such spectacles and creates trouble, sends mixed signals to Taiwan’s independence forces and purposefully stirs tensions in the Taiwan Straits,” it said. “Theatre’s troops maintain high alert at all times, resolutely counter all threats and provocations, and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The statement says.
The US Navy referred to the ship as “transit through a corridor in the strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state”. Taiwan’s defense ministry said the US ship sailed north through the strait, and that the situation in the waterway was “normal”.
Late on Tuesday, the ministry noted that a Chinese WZ-10 assault helicopter had briefly crossed the strait’s unofficial midline, which fighters on either side usually keep away from passing, although China of air pressure achieves this in one go. It also reported that two Chinese KA-28 anti-submarine helicopters have been sighted in the area between Taiwan’s southwest coast and the Taiwan-controlled Prates Islands on top of the South China Sea.