The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami arrives in Diego Garcia for a scheduled port visit, July 17, 2024. (Jordan Steis/U.S. Navy)

A Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time on Wednesday, according to a local media report.

The destroyer JS Sazanami, along with Australian and New Zealand vessels, sailed south from the East China Sea and through the 110-mile-wide channel separating the island from mainland China, Kyodo News reported, citing an unnamed source who was “familiar with the matter.”

The ships were believed to be headed to the South China Sea to participate in exercises, the report said.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to comment on the transit during a news conference Thursday.

“In recent years, China’s military activities around our country have been expanding and becoming more active,” he said. “We will continue closely monitoring with strong interest and exert all efforts to ensure surveillance and monitoring activities can be carried out properly.”

A Ministry of Defense spokesman acknowledged but did not immediately respond to questions emailed by Stars and Stripes on Thursday afternoon.

Beijing views trips through the strait as provocative and regularly condemns them as support for Taiwan. China does not consider the strait an international waterway and holds that Taiwan itself is a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland.

China has “sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over the waterway, former Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in June 2022. He is now China’s ambassador to Cambodia.

Referring to the strait as “international waters” is an attempt to manipulate China’s claim over Taiwan, he said at the time.

The U.S. Navy routinely sends warships through the strait and describes those transits as a routine means of traveling between the South China and East China seas.

Last week, a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through international airspace over the strait, the U.S. 7th Fleet said.

On Sept. 13, the German navy said its frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and support ship Frankfurt am Main transited the strait north to south. It was the first such trip by German ships in more than two decades, The Associated Press reported.

Chinese vessels frequently intrude into Japanese waters near the Senkakus, islets about 105 miles east of Taiwan that are administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing and Taipei.

Earlier this month, a Chinese aircraft carrier sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni and nearby Iriomote, entering the country’s contiguous zone, according to the Defense Ministry.

In July, the Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer JS Suzutsuki reportedly sailed into Chinese territorial waters within 12 nautical miles of the coast of Zhejiang province. The ship’s captain was replaced that month, Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said at a news conference Tuesday.