Two U.S. Navy ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait this week — the first transit of the waterway under U.S. President Donald Trump’s new administration — prompting an angry rebuke from China.
The U.S. Navy said the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and survey ship USNS Bowditch had carried out a “routine north-to-south Taiwan Strait transit” from Monday to Wednesday.
“Ships transit between the East China Sea and the South China Sea via the Taiwan Strait and have done so for many years,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command spokesman Cmdr. Matthew Comer told The Japan Times. “The transit occurred through a corridor in the Taiwan Strait that is beyond any coastal state’s territorial seas. Within this corridor all nations enjoy high-seas freedom of navigation, overflight and other internationally lawful uses of the sea related to these freedoms.”
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