Two US military vessels transited the Taiwan Strait from Sunday through early yesterday, the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement, the first such mission since US President Donald Trump took office last month.
The two vessels sailed south through the Strait, the ministry said, adding that it closely monitored nearby airspace and waters at the time and observed nothing unusual.
The ministry did not name the two vessels, but the US Navy identified them as the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and the Pathfinder-class survey ship USNS Bowditch.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The ships carried out a north-to-south transit from Monday to yesterday, a US military spokesperson said.
“The transit occurred through a corridor in the Taiwan Strait that is beyond any coastal state’s territorial seas,” said US Navy Commander Matthew Comer, a spokesperson at the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command.
“Within this corridor all nations enjoy high-seas freedom of navigation, overflight and other internationally lawful uses of the sea related to these freedoms,” Comer said.
The US 7th Fleet did not publicize the passage in a news release, as was standard during the previous administration of former US president Joe Biden.
The confirmations made by the US and Taiwanese militaries came after China made a statement regarding the transit earlier yesterday.
The Chinese state-run Global Times quoted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command spokesman Li Xi (李熹) as saying that Chinese forces have “deployed naval and air forces to monitor the entire passage of the US vessels, effectively responding to and managing the situation.”
“The actions of the US sent the wrong signals and increased security risks. The Eastern Theater Command remains on high alert, resolutely safeguarding national sovereignty and security, as well as regional peace and stability,” Li said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) in Beijing said that Taiwan was a “core interest” for the country and that the US should act with caution.
“We are resolutely opposed to this and will never allow any outside interference, and have the firm will, full confidence and capability to uphold the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said.
“I really do not need to explain further who is the so-called troublemaker around the Taiwan Strait. All other countries in the neighborhood have a deep appreciation of this,” ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) told reporters in Taipei.
The US Navy, sometimes joined by allies, makes regular transits through the Taiwan Strait in what it calls exercising freedom of navigation rights.
The last time a US warship transited the Strait was on Oct. 20 last year.
It was an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins, along with a Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Vancouver.
Chinese state television yesterday said that since Lunar New Year’s Eve on Jan. 28, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command had repeatedly dispatched sea and air forces to carry out “combat readiness” patrols and training missions around Taiwan.
The operations aim to “guard the joy and peace of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” the report said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS