US Sends Warship Through Taiwan Strait Near China

The U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey conducts routine underway operations while transiting through the Taiwan Strait on May 8.

A U.S. missile destroyer sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday for the first time in two months, triggering a response from the Chinese military.

The USS Halsey, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, “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 U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, based in Japan, said in a statement.

“The ship transited through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal State,” it said of the maneuver, the first by a U.S. warship since the USS John Finn in March, and after a Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace last month.

Col. Li Xi, a spokesperson for China’s Eastern Theater Command, facing the strait, said Chinese air and naval forces were dispatched to “track and monitor” the Halsey.

China Military Online, the official portal of the country’s armed forces, called it a “provocative move.”

The 110-mile waterway, home to some of the most important shipping lanes in the world, separates the Chinese mainland from Taiwan, which Communist Party leaders in Beijing claim as part of China’s territory, despite Taipei’s rejections and the Taiwanese public’s declining interest in a cross-strait political union.

Washington has been Taipei strongest international backer and main arms supplier for decades, even after cutting diplomatic ties in favor of Beijing in 1979. Officially, the United States takes no position on sovereignty over Taiwan but insists that political differences be resolved peacefully.

Its presence in the Taiwan Strait and in the waters of the Western Pacific has long been considered a signal of resolve, and a message to China’s leaders that American military intervention in any cross-strait crisis is possible, even likely.

The U.S. Navy has sailed or flown through the strait four times this year, after it, along with the U.S. Coast Guard and allied navies, made 11 transits last year and 10 in 2022.

“Halsey’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to upholding freedom of navigation for all nations as a principle,” said the Seventh Fleet. “The United States military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows.”

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the U.S. warship entered the strait from north to south at 7 a.m. local time. It reported no unusual activity during the operation but said separately on Thursday that 23 Chinese military aircraft and five Chinese navy vessels were detected around Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on May 9.

It was unclear whether their presence was linked to the Halsey, in what was the ship’s first return to the waters of the Taiwan Strait for nearly four years, since a previous transit in August 2020.

China’s Defense Ministry did not answer calls seeking comment.

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