The US military said it sent two Navy warships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday as the Pentagon increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The voyage \nrisks further raising tensions with China but will likely be viewed by \nself-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump administration \namid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taiwan is one \nof a growing number of flashpoints in the US-China relationship, which \nalso include a trade war, US sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular\n military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also \nconducts freedom-of-navigation patrols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The ships’ transit \nthrough the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and \nopen Indo-Pacific,” Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the US Navy’s \nSeventh Fleet, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doss said there were no \nunsafe or unprofessional interactions with other countries’ vessels \nduring the transit.Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the US ships had \nsailed north through the strait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“US ships freely passing through\n the Taiwan Strait is part of the mission of carrying out the \nIndo-Pacific strategy,” it said in a statement.Taiwan’s armed forces \nmonitored the transit and nothing out of the ordinary happened during \nit, the ministry said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no immediate comment from \nChina.The United States has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by \nlaw to help provide the island with the means to defend itself and is \nits main source of arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Pentagon says Washington has sold \nTaipei more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.China has been \nramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island, which it \nconsiders a wayward province of “one China” and sacred Chinese \nterritory.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US military said it sent two Navy warships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday as the Pentagon increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China. The voyage risks further raising tensions with China but will likely be viewed by self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60234,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60231\/revisions\/60234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}