China’s aircraft carrier Shandong yesterday sailed through the Taiwan Strait accompanied by two other ships, the Ministry of National Defense said, adding that it was monitoring the situation and would respond accordingly.
The presence of Chinese warships is constantly monitored and announced near-daily by Taipei, but the passage of the Shandong, commissioned in 2019, through the Strait is unusual.
“A [Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy] flotilla of 3 ships, led by the Shangdong aircraft carrier, passed through the Taiwan Strait around noon today,” the ministry wrote in a statement.
Photo: Xinhua via AP
The flotilla went “to the west of the median line, heading northward,” it added.
The median line serves as an unofficial barrier between the two nations.
Taiwan’s military closely monitored the group using its own ships and aircraft, and “responded appropriately,” the ministry said.
Yesterday’s show of force from Beijing comes more than a month after China launched aerial and naval exercises around Taiwan’s main island.
The Shandong also participated in those exercises, and J-15 fighter jets were deployed from it, although the vessel was not in the Taiwan Strait, but southeast of Taiwan.
The exercises were a response to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) meeting with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California last month.
In March last year, the Shandong sailed through the Taiwan Strait hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Joe Biden were due to talk.
Prior to that, the carrier transited the Strait in December 2020, a day after a US warship had passed through the Strait, and again in December 2019, weeks before Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections.
China has continued to conduct military activities on a smaller scale around Taiwan after formally ending its exercises last month.
The defense ministry yesterday also announced that over the past 24 hours, eight Chinese fighter jets had crossed the Strait’s median line, something Chinese war planes have been doing on a regular basis.
Steve Tsang (曾銳生), director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London said the Shandong’s transit through the Taiwan Strait was “very unusual.”
“But the Chinese have been trying to display their military might around Taiwan in the past six months to a year, so in that context it is fitting into a general pattern,” he said.
He said it also displayed a “lack of understanding” of modern military warfare.
“In the modern era of powerful anti-ship missiles, why would you send a very big ship into a relatively narrow strip of water with limited maneuverability?” he said, adding that the sail-by was “a message.”
Military experts attending a defense forum held by Tamkang University’s Center for Advanced Technology in Taipei yesterday described the transit as a “gray zone” tactic by China intended to intimidate Taiwanese.
Tsiam Siong-ui (詹祥威), a policy analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said China has been using “gray zone” tactics to give the international community the impression that Taiwan is part of its territory, while destabilizing life in Taiwan.
China has not issued a statement regarding the aircraft carrier’s passage through the Strait.
Additional reporting by CNA and Reuters
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