A US Navy destroyer yesterday sailed through the Taiwan Strait to show Washington’s “commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Seventh Fleet of the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.
The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson was conducting a routine transit through international waters, the fleet said.
“The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Seventh Fleet spokesperson Nicholas Lingo said in a statement. “The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed the transit, saying in a statement that the military had a full grasp of the situation as the US warship sailed through the Strait northward, and did not spot any irregularities.
According to the US military, the last time the US Navy conducted a similar navigation was on Jan. 22, when the USS Dewey (DDG-105), an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, sailed through the Strait.
US Navy ships routinely sail through the Taiwan Strait, but yesterday’s transit came as the crisis in Ukraine continues to unfold.
Taiwan is in a heightened state of alert due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nervous that China might try to take advantage of the situation to make a move on the nation, although the government has reported no unusual Chinese maneuvers.
The air force last night said that eight Chinese military aircraft had entered the nation’s southwestern air defense identification zone earlier in the day.
Taiwan responded by dispatching planes to monitor the Chinese aircraft, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing air defense assets, it added.
China has sent record numbers of military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the past two years.
Beijing says Taiwan is the most sensitive and important issue in its relations with Washington.
A growing number of US allies have transited the Strait as Beijing intensifies its military threats toward Taiwan and solidifies its control over the disputed South China Sea.
British, Canadian, French and Australian warships have all passed through the Strait in the past few years, sparking protests from Beijing.
Collin Koh, a research fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, keeps a database of declared US transits through the Strait.
Nine were conducted in 2019, followed by 15 in 2020 and 12 last year. So far this year there have been two, including the USS Ralph Johnson crossing.
Additional reporting by Wu Su-wei and AFP
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks
INFORMATION LEAKED: Documents from Xinjiang purportedly showed top leaders in Beijing calling for a forceful crackdown and even orders to shoot to kill Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday held a videoconference with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet as she visited Xinjiang during a mission overshadowed by fresh allegations of Uighur abuses and fears she is being used as a public relations tool. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been accused of detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region as part of a years-long crackdown the US and lawmakers in other Western nations have labeled a “genocide.” China denies the allegations. Bachelet was expected to visit the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar on a six-day tour. The US
RSS