The US warship USS Milius sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday (16), in what the US Navy described on Monday (17) as a “routine” transit, just days after China ended its latest military exercises around the island.
China, which sees Taiwan as its own territory, officially ended its three-day drills last Monday around Taiwan, where it practiced precision strikes and blockaded the island.
Beijing staged the drills to express irritation over Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, seeing it as interference in China’s internal affairs and US support for the separate identity of Taiwan from China.
The US Navy’s 7th Fleet said the destroyer USS Milius performed a “routine transit in the Taiwan Strait” through waters “where freedoms of navigation and overflight on the high seas apply under international law.”
The ship’s transit demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, he added.
The Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command said in a social media post on Monday that it had deployed troops to follow and monitor the US destroyer throughout the operation.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said the ship sailed north through the strait and that during transit the situation in the strait was “normal”.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring democratically governed Taiwan under its control.
Taiwan’s government rejects China’s territorial claims and says only the island’s people can decide its future.
(Additional reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Liz Lee; Editing by Liz Lee)
Source: CNN Brasil
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