The US reduced its number of naval transits through the Taiwan Strait last year to the lowest level in four years even as China stepped up military pressure on the nation.
The US Seventh Fleet sent nine warships through the body of water separating China and Taiwan last year, Bloomberg data showed.
The fleet said it sailed a destroyer through on Thursday, a vessel the Chinese military said it monitored.
Photo: EPA
The US Navy also conducted four “freedom of navigation operations” through the South China Sea, the fewest in six years, trips it says show its dedication to a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The decline in US naval activity is in contrast with the about 1,700 warplanes that China sent into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone last year, nearly double the number of 2021.
Those incursions are a key aspect of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) efforts to escalate pressure on Taiwan because President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) rejected a “one country, two systems” model proposed by Beijing.
The shift by the US also comes as ties with China have improved since a meeting in November last year between Xi and US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Reducing the number of voyages through the strait or the South China Sea — where several nations, including Taiwan, have territorial disputes with China — would be a way for the US to eliminate some friction.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) last month called US military activity near its shores “provocative and dangerous.”
Last year, Chinese military officials reportedly told their US counterparts that the Taiwan Strait is not international waters, and Wang later said China had “sovereignty” over the area.
Drew Thompson, a former US Department of Defense official and visiting senior fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said the voyages by the US Navy “are just one aspect of US military presence, so they should be judged qualitatively, not quantitatively.”
The US sent two guided-missile cruisers through the Taiwan Strait after China held major military exercises in August last year, when it showed its displeasure over then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taipei.
The US’ move might have been a calibrated signal by the Biden administration to show it was resolved to maintain a naval presence in the waterway without prompting an additional response from China.
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