TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, nearly a week after China conducted large-scale military exercises around Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.
The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet issued a statement on Monday that the destroyer USS Higgins and the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver made “regular” transits through the Taiwan Strait to uphold the principles of freedom of navigation for all nations.
The U.S. Navy, occasionally joined by ships from allied nations, regularly transits the treacherous waterway separating China and Taiwan.
China condemned the exercise, saying it undermines regional peace and stability.
The People’s Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command announced that it had mobilized naval and air forces to monitor the navigation of U.S. and Canadian ships “in accordance with the law.”
A statement from the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said the ships sailed “in areas covered by freedom of navigation and overflight on the high seas in accordance with international law.”
“The international community’s navigational rights and freedoms in the Taiwan Strait should not be restricted,” it added.
The passage comes less than a week after China last Monday conducted large-scale military exercises around Taiwan and its remote islands that simulated a blockade of major ports, in a move to highlight the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait. It was held on.
In response to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-de’s National Day speech, the Chinese government used a record 125 aircraft, as well as aircraft carriers and ships from Liaoning Province, as part of the training exercise. Lai emphasized his determination to “resist annexation and invasion” by the Chinese government.
Taiwan was a Japanese colony until it was unified by China at the end of World War II. It split in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang fled to the island after Mao Zedong’s communists defeated the Kuomintang in a civil war and seized power.
The United States is Taiwan’s largest unofficial ally and is bound by its own laws to provide the island with means of self-defense.
