American and Canadian Warships Sail Through Waters Between China and Taiwan

( Newsweek )

U.S. and Canadian warships jointly sailed through the international waters of the contentious Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, just days after a Chinese general said that a war with neighboring Taiwan would be "just and legitimate."

It was the 60th time "freedom of navigation transit" was tracked in the 100-mile-wide waterway since July 2018, according to a chart compiled by Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies think tank. All but 14 of these involved at least one U.S. guided-missile destroyer, and five involved the participation of Canadian ships.

This time, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta was joined by Canadian Halifax-class frigate the HMCS Ottawa. It was the second time the Ottawa had transited the strait with a U.S. Navy destroyer this year.

The Seventh Fleet said on Thursday that the transit was "unremarkable, unprovocative, and consistent with international law." The passage shows the "commitment of Washington and its allies and partners to a free and open Indo-Pacific."

Headquartered in Japan's Kanazawa Prefecture, the Seventh Fleet is the largest of the forward-deployed U.S. Navy fleets.

Canada's defense department wrote in a social media post that the "routine transit" was in line with its activities that "promote peace, resilience and security in the Indo-Pacific."

China frequently accuses countries operating in the Taiwan Strait of stirring up trouble on its doorstep.

The Chinese military's Eastern Theater Command issued a statement saying it monitored the U.S. and Canadian warships as they went through the strait. "The theater command remains on high alert to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and regional peace and stability," it said.

The Chinese foreign ministry hadn't responded to Newsweek's request for comment by publication time.

On the other side of the strait, Taiwan's ministry of defense said it observed the ships as they sailed northward through the strait and that "situation was normal."

The Taiwanese defense authorities also reported they had detected 43 Chinese military aircraft and seven Chinese warships in the strait on Wednesday morning, with 37 of the planes having flown across the midpoint of the strait and south and southeast of the island territory.

While China lays claim to Taiwan and routinely threatens to annex it, both sides for decades tacitly agreed to restrict military activities to their respective sides of the strait's "median line." However, China has for three years been sending ever-increasing numbers of aircraft over this line as part of its pressure campaign against Taiwan's current China-skeptic government.

Experts believe these sorties serve several purposes, including to give Chinese pilots practice in a potential future combat zone.

The latest Taiwan Strait transit also comes amid heightened tensions between China and the U.S and Canada.

Beijing and Washington are at loggerheads over the situation around Taiwan, Chinese aggression toward U.S. ally the Philippines in the South China Sea, ongoing trade and tech wars, and human rights violations in Hong Kong and the northwest Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Additionally, American and Canadian defense forces last month released footage of Chinese fighter jets performing risky, up-close maneuvers as they intercepted patrol planes belonging to the North American countries.