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A US warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait, the US navy said on Thursday, a day after a senior US commander warned of the threat to Taiwan from a Chinese invasion in the next six years.
The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS John Finn made a routine transit yesterday through the waterway that separates mainland China and Taiwan, the US Seventh Fleet said.
The third such trip since President Joe Biden took office “demonstrates America’s commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said in a statement.
American warships periodically conduct navigation exercises in the strait, often eliciting angry responses from Beijing, which claims Taiwan and the surrounding waters as its own territory.
The United States and many other countries view the route as international waters open to all.
The latest transit came on the same day that Beijing accused Admiral Philip Davidson, the top US military officer in the Asia-Pacific, of trying to “exaggerate” China’s military threat.
At a Senate committee hearing the previous day, Davidson warned that the United States was losing its military advantage over China in the Pacific and gave a stark assessment that he believed an invasion of Taiwan by Beijing might be imminent.
“I am concerned that they are (China) accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order … by 2050,” Davidson said.
“Taiwan is clearly one of his ambitions before that. And I think the threat manifests itself during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”
Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by authoritarian China, which sees the island as part of its territory waiting to be reunited, by force if necessary.
President Xi Jinping has become the most bellicose leader since Mao, describing the takeover of Taiwan as “inevitable”.
Beijing has stepped up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen, who views the island as “already independent” rather than part of her “one China.”
Last year, Chinese military aircraft carried out a record 380 sorties into Taiwan’s defense zone, with some analysts warning that tensions between the two sides were at their highest since the mid-1990s. -French Media Agency
