The guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins travels through the Taiwan Strait with the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver, Oct. 20, 2024. (Trevor Hale/U.S. Navy)
A Canadian frigate joined a U.S. Navy warship for a trip through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, less than a week after China concluded a large-scale military exercise around Taiwan.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins and the frigate HMCS Vancouver cruised southwest through the 110-mile-wide waterway that separates Taiwan from mainland China as part of a routine transit, the U.S. 7th Fleet said in a news release Monday.
“As part of normal operations, the ships were conducting a transit of the Taiwan Strait from the South China Sea to the East China Sea in accordance with international law,” 7th Fleet spokesman Lt. Victor Murkowski told Stars and Stripes by email Monday.
The Navy regularly sends warships and sometimes aircraft through the strait that are occasionally joined by allied vessels. The transits serve as both a means of navigating between the East China Sea and South China Sea and as a protest of Beijing’s claims of jurisdiction over the strait.
“No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms,” Murkowski said. “U.S. ships and aircraft operate in accordance with international law, often alongside allies and partners, on the sea and in the air, to ensure that all nations can do the same without fear or contest.”
Sailors stand watch in the pilot house as the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins sails through the Taiwan Strait with a Canadian frigate, Oct. 20, 2024. (Trevor Hale/U.S. Navy)
Beijing, however, routinely labels such trips as provocative. China’s Eastern Theater Command on Monday said it organized ships and aircraft to “monitor and guard” the ships’ passage.
“The actions of the US and Canada are disturbing and disrupting the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait,” Eastern Theater Command spokesman Col. Li Xi said in a post to social media site Weibo. “The theater troops are always on high alert and resolutely defend national sovereignty and security and regional peace and stability.”
Murkowski did not say whether the ships encountered Chinese forces but said the U.S. military routinely interacts foreign warships and aircraft when operating in the region.
The transit comes six days after China’s military concluded a series of drills around Taiwan, a democracy that China views as a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
The Oct. 14 exercise, Joint Sword 2024B, included more than two dozen ships and a one-day record of 153 warplanes active in the skies around Taiwan.
Beijing billed the exercise as a punishment for Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s recent rhetoric, including an Oct. 10 speech for Taiwan’s National Day in which he promised to defend the island’s sovereignty but also expressed willingness to work with China to maintain regional peace.
“On this land, democracy and freedom are growing and thriving,” Lai said, according to a transcript posted by his office. “The People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan.”
In late September, a Japanese destroyer accompanied by warships from New Zealand and Australia made the first-ever transit of the strait by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. In mid-September, a German frigate and support ship made the passage together.
