Beijing (EFE).- The United States Army announced today that a missile-launching destroyer conducted a “routine transit” through the Taiwan Strait this Sunday, a step that occurs at a time of tension between Washington and Beijing and a few days after for China to deploy military maneuvers around the island.
The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Milius sailed through a corridor outside territorial waters of any country and where international law allows freedom of navigation and overflight, according to a statement released today by the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet. .
“The transit of the Milius through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The US Army flies, navigates and operates where international law allows”, adds the official text.
This same ship sailed last week through waters near the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the South China Sea that Beijing disputes with the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
The Chinese Army then condemned the passage of the US destroyer, which it described as “illegal entry and without the approval of the Government” of China.
Chinese maneuvers
The presence of the US destroyer in the area coincides with an escalation of tensions between China and the US on account of the meeting in California (USA) held on April 5 by the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, and the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy.
In response to the meeting, China deployed four days of intense military exercises around Taiwan that included a simulation of the blockade of the island and in which the Shandong, the second aircraft carrier of the Asian country and the first of national manufacture, participated.
The island is one of the biggest sources of conflict between China and the United States, mainly because Washington is Taiwan’s main arms supplier and would be its greatest military ally in the event of a war with the Asian giant.
Beijing has considered Taiwan a rogue province since Kuomintang nationalists withdrew there in 1949 after losing the civil war to the communist army.