A Japanese warship has sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since World War II in a pointed message to China, which claims dominion over the busy waterway.
The 10-hour passage by the JS Sazanami occurred on Thursday on the order of Prime Ministry Fumio Kishida, Japanese news agency the Yomiuri Shimbun cited government sources as saying. The Takanami-class destroyer was joined in its transit by the Australian destroyer the HMAS Sydney and New Zealand supply ship the HMNZS Aotearoa, Chinese state-run outlet the Global Times reported.
China considers Taiwan as its territory, although the Chinese Communist Party government has never ruled there. Thus, Beijing claims waters around the self-ruled island fall within its 200-nautical mile (230 miles) exclusive economic zone.
Washington and its allies consider the part of the strait that lies outside China's and Taiwan's territorial waters to be the high seas, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The U.S. and its allies send warships multiple times a year to support freedom of navigation in international waters, though Wednesday's marked the first such transit since the formation of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.
Last week, a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine patrol plane from the U.S.'s forward-deployed Seventh Fleet. German warships passed through the contested Taiwan Strait on Friday, for the first time in 22 years.
Wednesday's Taiwan Strait transits follow a flurry of Chinese military activity around Japan in recent weeks.
Last week, Soviet-built aircraft carrier the Liaoning and two escorting destroyers dipped into Japan's contiguous zone, the 12-nautical-mile buffer zone between territorial and international waters, per Japanese media.
Late last month, a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance plane briefly entered Japanese airspace near Nagasaki Prefecture's Danjo Islands in the East China Sea, prompting Japan to scramble fighters.
In recent years, Chinese forces have ramped up their presence in the Taiwan Strait, which at its narrowest point is approximately 80 miles.
These activities have included large and increasingly coordinated exercises between Chinese air, naval, and missile units, including a simulated blockade of Taiwan to punish its ruling Democratic Progressive Party leadership, considered by Beijing to be separatists.
Chinese warplanes are also carrying out near-daily sorties across the median line, the de facto boundary between the neighbors, to wear down responding Taiwanese air units and keep up the pressure on Taipei.
As of 6 a.m. Thursday, 43 Chinese aircraft and 8 PLAN vessels were operating around Taiwan, according to the island's Defense Ministry. Of these, 34 of the aircraft crossed the midpoint.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Japanese Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for a response.
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