A U.S. Navy warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday in what Pentagon officials said was a demonstration of the U.S. commitment to keep the waterway that separates Taiwan from mainland China open to international traffic.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Chung Hoon made the passage from the South China Sea north through the 100-mile strait and into the East China Sea, said Navy Lt. Kristina Wiedemann, spokeswoman for the Seventh Fleet.
The “freedom of navigation operation” was the Navy’s first through the strait since tensions soared over Christmas weekend when some 71 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft and seven Chinese navy warships conducted operations around Taiwan, the island democracy Beijing has vowed one day to reclaim.