US sends warships to Taiwan Strait amid tensions with China

Two US Navy warships United States entered the Strait of Taiwan This Sunday (28), in the first US naval transit in the area since the country’s tensions with China increased this month due to a visit to the island by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

The guided missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Chancellorsville were making the voyage “through waters where freedoms of navigation and overflight on the high seas apply under international law,” the US 7th Fleet in Japan said in a statement.

She said the transit was “in progress” and that there had been “no interference from foreign military forces so far”.

“These ships [estão em trânsito] by a corridor in the strait which is beyond the territorial sea of ​​any coastal state. The transit of ships through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. US military personnel fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” the statement said.

The Command of the Eastern Scene of the military of the China said he was monitoring both ships, maintaining high alert and “ready to thwart any provocation”.

The strait is a 180-kilometer stretch of water that separates the democratic, self-governing island of Taiwan from mainland China.

Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has never controlled the island – and considers the strait part of its “internal waters”.

The US Navy, however, says most of the strait is in international waters.

The United States cites international law that defines territorial waters as extending 22.2 kilometers off a country’s coast and regularly sends its warships across the strait in what it calls freedom of navigation operations, including recent voyages by the destroyers of guided missiles USS Benfold and USS Port Royal.

These moves drew angry responses from Beijing .

“The frequent provocations and displays fully demonstrate that the United States is the destroyer of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the creator of security risks in the Taiwan Strait,” said Colonel Shi Yi, a spokesman for the Liberation Army. Popular (ELP) after the Benfold transit on July 19.

Beijing has stepped up military maneuvers in the Strait – and in the skies above it – following Pelosi’s visit to the island earlier this month.

Minutes after Pelosi’s landing in Taiwan on August 2, the PLA announced four days of military exercises in six zones around the island.

The maneuvers have included launching ballistic missiles into waters around Taiwan, several Chinese warships sailing through the Strait and dozens of PLA warplanes breaching the median line — the midway point between mainland China and Taiwan that Beijing says it does not recognize. , but respected until then.

Since these exercises officially ended, PLA warplanes have continued to cross the midline daily, often in double-digit numbers, according to statistics from Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense.

On August 8, the last of four days of exercises announced the night Pelosi landed in Taiwan, through August 22, between five and 21 PLA aircraft crossed the midline each day.

In July, a month before Pelosi’s trip, Chinese warplanes crossed the median line just once, with an unspecified number of jets, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

Additionally, reports from Taiwan point out that between five and 14 PLA warships have been spotted in the waters around the island.

PLA exercises continue this week, part of what is normally a busy season for Chinese exercises.

China’s Eastern Scenario Command said on Friday that it had conducted “joint combat readiness security patrols and combat training exercises involving troops of various services and weapons in water and airspace” around Taiwan.

That announcement came after U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the latest member of Congress to visit Taiwan in defiance of pressure from Beijing, saying: “ I will not be intimidated by Communist China.”

In tweets on Friday morning the senator, who does not represent the Biden administration, reiterated her support for Taiwan.

“I will never bow to the Chinese Communist Party,” she said. “I will continue to support the Taiwanese and their right to freedom and democracy. Xi Jinping doesn’t scare me,” she later added, referring to China’s leader.

Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, told CNN last week that Beijing’s response to the visit of Pelosi Taiwan was “an overreaction”.

“We don’t believe there should be a crisis in US-China relations after the visit – the peaceful visit – of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan… it was a crisis fabricated by the government in Beijing,” he said.

Now, “it is up to the government here in Beijing to convince the rest of the world that it will act peacefully in the future,” the ambassador said.

“I think there is a lot of concern around the world that China has become an agent of instability in the Taiwan Strait and that is in no one’s interest,” he said.

Other US officials said Washington would not change the way the US military operates in the region.

“We will continue to fly, sail and operate where international law allows, consistent with our long-standing commitment to freedom of navigation, and this includes conducting standard air and sea transits through the Taiwan Strait in the coming weeks,” said Kurt Campbell. , government coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, told reporters at the White House on Aug.

Chinese ambassador to Washington Qin Gang said last week that US transits only intensify tensions.

“I urge fellow Americans to be moderate, do nothing to increase tension,” Qin told reporters in Washington. “If there is any move that harms Chinese territorial integrity and sovereignty, China will respond.”