dispatched a battleship to the sensitive for the first time on Wednesday to convey a message to China, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said in a report citing multiple government officials.
The move by Japan, to assert its freedom of navigation, came on the same day China said it had successfully into the Pacific Ocean.
Japan’s Self Defense Force’s warship Sazanami began sailing from the East China Sea on Wednesday morning and spent more than 10 hours to complete the passage, the Japanese newspaper reported on Thursday.
The passage was conducted jointly with naval ships from Australia and New Zealand, according to the report.
Last week, for the first time, China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier sailed between two Japanese islands near Taiwan. It was accompanied by two destroyers.
The newspaper cited anonymous government sources saying Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered the passage of the warship into the Taiwan Strait. They reportedly said he felt that taking no action after could encourage Beijing to be more assertive.
However, Japan’s defense ministry did not immediately confirm the warship’s passage.
China’s growing desire for dominance in the region
China has repeatedly maintained that it will bring , with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s growing rhetoric of “unification” being “inevitable.”
Beijing, which sees Taiwan as part of its territory, also claims jurisdiction over the waters that separate the island from China.
However, according to the US and many other countries, such patrolling exercises in the Taiwan Strait are usual, citing freedom of navigation.
Earlier this month, when through the Taiwan Strait, of risking security in the region.
mfi/rc (AFP, Reuters)
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