AMN/ WEB DESK
China and the US have again engaged in military maneuvering in the sensitive Taiwan strait amid Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s call for enhanced military vigilance in response to the Ukraine situation. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, which U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said was a “routine” transit through international waters, but Chinese PLA Eastern Theatre Command described as “provocative.” Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it observed nothing out of the ordinary.
Experts say the transit of a United States warship through the Taiwan Strait was meant as a warning to China not to take advantage of the current geopolitical situation to initiate any conflict with Taiwan in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which raised alarm in Taipei. Taiwanese media reported that the transit was intended to send a signal to Beijing that Washington remains focused on the Indo-Pacific despite events unfolding in Eastern Europe. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said that on Saturday eight Chinese aircraft including six fighters and two anti-submarine aircraft made incursions into its ADIZ.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory and has repeatedly sent its fighter jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the past two years. Taiwan remains the most sensitive and important issue in the bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington. Like most countries, the United States has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is its most important international supporter and arms supplier and maintains the policy of “strategic ambiguity” over the island’s security.
Amid the ongoing geopolitical anxiety and its repercussions in the Indo-Pacific, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in an interview on Sunday with a Japanese TV channel said that it is time for the U.S. to end its longstanding strategic ambiguity and make clear that it would defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. Abe once again said that “a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency,” adding that Japan’s westernmost inhabited island of Yonaguni is just 110 km from Taiwan’s main island. He said, “If China were to secure wide air superiority, it would also cover Japanese airspace,” and added that PLA operations would also affect Japanese territorial waters.