(Ottawa) Canada asserts it has full rights to navigate the Taiwan Strait after China claimed it was on “permanent high alert” the day after a Canadian military vessel and an American ship transited.
Posted at 1:52 p.m.
The USS Rafael Peralta, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, made a routine transit through the strait on Wednesday alongside the Canadian frigate HMCS Ottawa for the second time in two months.
The Canadian government did not hide it: Defense Minister Bill Blair announced it on the X network on Wednesday evening.
“Canada and the United States are working to support a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. HMCS Ottawa and USS Rafael Peralta crossed the Taiwan Strait. And as a Pacific nation, we will continue to promote peace and stability,” he wrote.
This is a routine transit, said communications director Daniel Minden on Thursday.
“We sail regularly in these international waters,” he wrote to La Presse.
The United States argued the same: the American Seventh Fleet said in a press release that the transit was in accordance with international law and “through a corridor in the strait located beyond the territorial sea of a state coast.”
But China has not interpreted it in the same way.
“The troops there remain on constant alert and will resolutely protect national sovereignty and security, as well as peace and stability in the region,” Col. Shi Yi, spokesman for China’s Eastern Theater Command, said in a news release.
Washington and its Western allies have increased passage of warships through the strait as part of the “freedom of navigation” program to remind people that they are international waterways, which has raised the ire of Beijing.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Thursday it had monitored the passage overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, but reiterated that “the situation was normal”.
with Agence France-Presse