It said the crossing was “in progress” and that “there has been no interference by foreign military forces so far.” “These ships (pass) through a strait corridor that lies beyond the territorial waters of any coastal state. The passage of the ships through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The The United States military flies, sails and operates wherever international law allows,” it said. The strait is a 110-mile (180 km) stretch of water that separates the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan from mainland China. Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite the fact that China’s ruling Communist Party has never controlled the island — and considers the narrow part of its “internal waters.” The US Navy, however, says most of the strait is in international waters. The Navy invokes an international law that defines territorial waters as extending 12 nautical miles (22.2 kilometers) from a country’s coastline and regularly sends its warships through the strait in what it calls freedom of navigation operations, including recent voyages by the guided destroyers USS Benfold and USS Port Royal. These crossings drew angry reactions from Beijing. “Frequent provocations and display by the US fully demonstrate that the US is the destroyer of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the creator of security risks in the Taiwan Strait,” Colonel Shi Yi, a spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command, said after Benfold’s passage on July 19. Beijing has stepped up military maneuvers in the strait — and the skies above it — since Pelosi’s visit to the island earlier this month. Within minutes of Pelosi’s landing in Taiwan on August 2, the PLA announced four days of military exercises in six zones encircling the island. The maneuvers included launching ballistic missiles into waters around Taiwan, numerous Chinese warships in the Taiwan Strait and dozens of PLA warplanes violating the median line — the midpoint between mainland China and Taiwan that Beijing says it does not recognize but he has largely respected it. Since those drills officially ended, PLA warplanes have continued to cross the median daily, usually in double digits, according to statistics from Taiwan’s defense ministry. From August 8, the last of four days of exercises announced the night Pelosi landed in Taiwan, to August 22, between five and 21 PLA aircraft crossed the median each day. In July, the month before Pelosi’s trip, Chinese warplanes crossed the median line only once, with an unspecified number of jets, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry. In addition, Taiwan reports that between five and 14 PLA warships have been sighted in the waters surrounding Taiwan. PLA exercises continue this week, part of what is usually a busy period for Chinese exercises. China’s Eastern Theater Command said on Friday it conducted “joint combat readiness security patrols and combat exercises involving troops of multiple services and weapons in the waters and airspace” around Taiwan. That announcement came after US Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the latest member of Congress to visit Taiwan in defiance of Beijing’s pressure, saying: “I will not be intimidated by Communist China back to the island”. In a tweet Friday morning, the US senator, who does not represent the Biden administration, reiterated her support for Taiwan. “I will never bow to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said in one. “I will continue to stand by (Taiwanese) and their right to freedom and democracy. Xi Jinping does not scare me,” she later added, referring to China’s leader. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, told CNN last week that Beijing’s response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was an “overreaction”. “We don’t think there should be a crisis in US-China relations because of the visit — the peaceful visit — of the speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan … it was a manufactured crisis by the government in Beijing.” Burns said in an interview from the US embassy. Now “it is up to the government here in Beijing to convince the rest of the world that it will act peacefully in the future,” the ambassador said. “I think there’s a lot of concern around the world that China has now become a destabilizing factor in the Taiwan Strait, and that’s not in anyone’s interest,” he said. Other US officials have said Washington will not change the way the US military operates in the region. “We will continue to fly, sail and operate where international law allows, consistent with our longstanding commitment to freedom of navigation, and that includes conducting routine air and sea passages through the Taiwan Strait in the coming weeks,” he said. Kurt Campbell. US President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific coordinator told reporters at the White House on August 12. China’s ambassador to Washington, Qin Gang, said last week that the US crossings were only heightening tensions. “I call on the American colleagues to show restraint, not to do anything to escalate the tension,” Chin told reporters in Washington. “If there is any move that harms China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, China will respond.”
