China’s military criticized a U.S. destroyer’s passage through the Taiwan Strait, which occurred less than two weeks before the island’s new president takes office and while Washington and Beijing are making uneven efforts to restore regular military exchanges.
Navy Senior Capt. Li Xi, spokesman for the Eastern Theater Command, accused the U.S. of having “publicly hyped” the passage of the USS Halsey on Wednesday. In a statement, Li said the command, which oversees operations around the strait, “organized naval and air forces to monitor” the ship’s transit and handle matters ”in accordance with laws and regulations.”
The Navy’s 7th Fleet said the Halsey “conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit on May 8 through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law.”
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer transited through a corridor in the Strait that is “beyond the territorial sea” of any coastal state, the fleet’s statement said.
“Halsey’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to upholding freedom of navigation for all nations as a principle,” it said “No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms. The United States military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows.”
China’s accusation that the transit was “publicly hyped” has been standard practice when Beijing sees the announcements as a means of pushing back against China’s ill-defined claims to some degree of control of who can and cannot pass freely through the strait. There was no indication the U.S. Navy had operated any differently in the latest case, nor that the Chinese response was any more vociferous.
The last such passage was April 17, a day after U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. Military-to-military contact stalled in August 2022, when Beijing suspended all such communication after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. China responded by firing missiles over Taiwan and staging a surge in military maneuvers, including what appeared to be a rehearsal of a naval and aerial blockade of the island.
The critical strait is 160 kilometers (100 mile) wide and divides China from Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy where President-elect William Lai Ching-te will be inaugurated on May 20. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party favors Taiwan’s de facto independent status that maintains strong unofficial relations with the U.S. and other major nations.
Taiwan’s military heightens its alert status around sensitive dates, such as this January’s presidential and legislative elections, wary that China might use its vastly more powerful military to attempt to intimidate voters and sway public opinion in favor of Beijing’s insistence that unification between the sides is inevitable.
The sides divided amid civil war in 1949, and as recently as 1996, China fired missiles just north and south of the island and held military exercises in an ultimately counterproductive bid to deter voters from backing candidates they disfavored. Since then, China has largely kept a low profile around elections, favoring instead to curry favor with business groups and treat unification-oriented politicians and grassroots officials to all-expenses paid visits to the mainland.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/china-us-taiwan-strait-8bcc1b0f6bc60cc254938abf532cf7be
