The United States Navy sent its second ship in as many weeks through the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday as tensions with China flared up again in the seas of eastern Asia.
The US 7th Fleet said the USS Port Royal, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, sailed near Taiwan “in accordance with international law”.
The US Navy and its allies conduct regular freedom of navigation patrols around Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy which China claims as its own.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command said that it shadowed the US cruiser on Tuesday, according to state media, and accused the US of showing support for “Taiwan independence secessionist forces”.
The Eastern Theatre Command made similar statements at the end of April after the US Navy sailed another warship through the 180-kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait.
The drill appears to be the latest in a tit-for-tat exchange with Beijing, said Michael Mazza, a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, although not yet reason to worry.
“I think these interactions are becoming the new normal – frequent moments of somewhat heightened tension, but nothing all that dangerous,” he told Al Jazeera.
The PLA has, meanwhile, been engaged in its own military drills.
On Friday, Beijing sent 18 war planes into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, an area of land and sea around southern China and Taiwan monitored by Taiwan’s military.
It was the biggest sortie since January 23, when Beijing sent 39 planes.
