A U.S. Navy warship and a Canadian frigate sailed through international waters in the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, the second such operation by the US navy since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in early August.
This was also the second joint transit by the U.S. and Canadian navies since Oct 2021.
Militaries of both countries confirmed that they conducted “a routine Taiwan Strait transit on Tuesday, September 20, through waters where high seas freedoms of navigation and over-flight apply in accordance with international law.”
The vessels that sailed through the strait included USS Higgins, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, and HMCS Vancouver, a Royal Canadian Navy frigate, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters Tuesday.
The military freedom of navigation operation was carried out at a time of heightened military tension between Beijing and Taipei.
China calls transit “provocative”
China also confirmed that the US and Canadian warships sailed through Taiwan Strait and slammed the joint move, calling it a “provocative” transit.
Shi Yi, a senior colonel of the Chinese military and the spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said in a statement that the US and Canadian warships sailing through the strait “hyped it up publicly.”
Denouncing the move, Shi Yi said the Chinese air and naval forces “tracked and monitored” the US and Canadian warships “in the whole course.”
“The troops of the PLA Eastern Theater Command are on high alert at all times to resolutely counter any threat and provocation, and safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Shi said.
A top US military official said the transit demonstrates the US and its allies’ commitment to a “free and open” Indo-Pacific.
“Higgins’ and Vancouver’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the commitment of the United States and our allies and partners to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” added a statement from U.S. Seventh Fleet, which covers U.S. military naval operations in the eastern Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In recent years warships from US and allied nations such as Canada and Britain, have routinely passed through the Taiwan strait, drawing the rage of China which claims that the Taiwan Strait is not international waters, but rather China’s “territorial sea.”
However, under international law, the Strait has a corridor of international waters and airspace which is not part of the territorial sea of any country, and all kinds of ships and vessels can transit freely through it.
Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden had also said that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if Beijing attacked the Island.