A Chinese aircraft carrier and a US warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait, which separates the island of Taiwan from mainland China, on Friday, the Taiwanese and US Defense Ministries said ahead of the long-awaited phone call between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
In a short message sent to AFP, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense confirmed the passage of the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong through the Taiwan Strait on Friday.
“We emphasize that we are warned and monitor all aircraft carriers and ships of the PLA (Chinese People’s Liberation Army) operating in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait,” warned the ministry.
In an email to AFP, the US Department of Defense then announced that “one of our destroyers” had crossed the Taiwan Strait on Friday.
The Taiwan Strait is an eminently sensitive area, Beijing considering Taiwan, a democratic and autonomous island, as part of its territory and having expressed its desire to seize it one day, by force if necessary.
The United States, Taiwan’s main ally, considers the strait an international maritime zone and has sent warships to the area to carry out operations in defense of “freedom of navigation”.
The announcement from the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense came ahead of the conversation between the US and Chinese heads of state on the situation in Ukraine. According to Chinese media, Chinese President Xi Jinping said during the interview that military conflicts between states were “in no one’s interest”.
In particular, he stressed that it was incumbent on the United States and China, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, to assume their “international responsibilities and to work for peace (…) in the world “.
Warship movements in the 180 km wide Taiwan Strait are not uncommon.
The Shandong previously sailed through the strait in December 2020, the day after a US warship passed.
The same aircraft carrier crossed the strait in December 2019, a few weeks before an election in Taiwan.
Under the Biden administration, Washington has lent its support to Taipei, approving at least two arms deals to the island to bolster its air and missile defense systems to respond to warplane incursions. Chinese. Beijing considers that this support “seriously compromises” relations between the United States and China.
China has massively boosted its strike force in recent years, sending 969 warplanes to Taiwan’s air defense zone in 2020, according to an AFP compilation, more than twice as many as the 380 planes reported in 2016.