For the first time since Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this month, two US warships entered the waters of the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, August 28, reports CNN.
Missile cruisers USS Antietam et USS Chancellorsville have evolved “in waters where freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight of the high seas apply in accordance with international law”said the US Navy in a press release quoted by the news channel.
According to the US Navy, which referred “a routine transit”, thes two cruisers did not enter the territorial waters of any coastal state. But the Chinese army command said it was monitoring the two ships and was “ready to thwart any provocation”.
About 180 km wide, the strait separates mainland China from the island of Taiwan. For the US Navy, most of this strait consists of international waters, specifies CNN. But Beijing considers that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory and that the waters of the strait are Chinese territorial waters.
Quoted by CNN, Chinese Ambassador to Washington Qin Gang said last week that US ship transits through the Taiwan Strait “were only intensifying the tensions”.
At the beginning of August, the “controversial visit” of Democrat Nancy Pelosi on the island had “infuriated China” and “led to intense Chinese military exercises off the coast of the island”, recalled the New York Times on August 14th.
In another article, the American daily reports that experts consider that Beijing could continue to implement this type of military exercises to respond “to what are perceived as provocations in the region”. “That’s what I see as the new normal,” thus explained Phillip C. Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington.