Japan Sends Warship Through Taiwan Strait, Defying China

(Bloomberg) —

Three US allies sent warships through the Taiwan Strait in a rare defiance of China in those waters, on the same day Beijing fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean in 44 years.

Japan sailed a vessel through the sensitive waterway Wednesday for the first time since re-establishing its armed forces after World War II, according to local media. Tokyo’s willingness to take a more robust stance on regional security is likely to anger China, which wants to regulate the strait and protests transits by foreign powers.

New Zealand’s HMNZS Aotearoa also passed through the major shipping lane for the first time since 2017, along with the Australian vessel HMAS Sydney, according to both nations’ defense ministries. Taiwan’s defense ministry declined to comment on the transits.

Hours before the rare voyages, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force made the surprise announcement it had fired an ICBM carrying a dummy warhead into international waters, marking Beijing’s first major missile launch since testing hypersonic weapons in 2021. The ruling Communist Party first publicly tested such an ICBM in May 1980.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Beijing had dealt with the entry of a Japanese vessel into the strait in accordance with “laws and regulations” and urged it not to interfere with the stability of the waterway at a regular briefing on Thursday.

The number of American partners transiting the strait hit a record this year, according to publicly available data from Taiwan and the US. Earlier this month, Germany also sent its first warship through Taiwan Strait in 22 years, as trade tensions simmer and European countries protest China’s support of Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

The ramped up military activity comes as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden prepare to hold a phone call, after a recent thaw in military talks that were suspended in the wake of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan. Chinese and US military commanders overseeing operations in the South China Sea recently had their first talks since that trip.

Underscoring lingering tensions, Biden was caught on a hot mic this month saying China was “testing” the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific during a summit that included Japan and Australia. 

The flurry of trips through the strait come as the world’s No. 2 economy ramps up military, economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who refuses to endorse the claim his democratically run island is part of China. Beijing hasn’t ruled out taking the territory by force, if necessary.

But while New Zealand and Australia confirmed their transits, Japanese government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to confirm at a press briefing if his nation sent a ship through the waterway. 

“Japan is sending the message that it stands with like-minded states such as the US,” said Kyoko Hatakeyama, a professor of international relations at the University of Niigata Prefecture. “Announcing this before or after the passage would be a loss of face for China. So I think there is some consideration for China, to show that Japan doesn’t want to worsen relations.”

Already fraught ties between Beijing and Tokyo have been tested in recent weeks by suspected territorial infringements by both sides and the fatal stabbing of a Japanese schoolboy in China.  

China claimed it had given “relevant countries” notice of the ICBM launch, with the Pentagon praising Beijing for its transparency on the forewarning. The Japanese Coast Guard said that it received a notice from China before the launch about potential space debris.

The PLA has been expanding its missile capabilities, with the nation’s Rocket Force possessing some 350 ICBMs with a range of more than 5,500 kilometers (3,420 miles), according to a Pentagon report. 

US officials have been increasingly concerned Beijing’s stance in the Taiwan Strait could result in more frequent challenges at sea. US Navy warships often transit the Taiwan Strait through a corridor the Pentagon says is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state. The US military has said the trips uphold freedom of navigation.

“This was a routine activity, consistent with international law,” a New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins said of this week’s transit. It exercised “the right of freedom of navigation as guaranteed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

© 2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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