The US and Canada each sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday in a joint operation that came less than a week after the Chinese military conducted blockade drills around the island.
The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins and the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver made the transit. The US framed the operation as “routine,” but Beijing always views US military activity in the sensitive waterway as a provocation.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said the US and Canadian warships “disturbed the situation and undermined peace and stability.” Col. Li Xi, a spokesman for the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, said Chinese forces monitored the ships throughout the transit.
The US frequently sails warships through the Taiwan Strait and has been encouraging its Western allies to join in on the provocations. Last month, German warships sailed through the sensitive waterway for the first time since 2002, which drew sharp condemnation from China.
On October 14, the PLA conducted drills simulating a blockade around Taiwan in response to a speech by Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te, where he said Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, was not “subordinate” to mainland China, known as the People’s Republic of China.
The Chinese military also made clear the drills were a warning to the US over its increasing support for Taiwan. “Relevant parties should cease supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ and stop undermining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said in a statement on the exercises.
China conducted its first blockade drill around Taiwan in August 2022 in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) making a provocative visit to the island despite major protests from Beijing.
The US has ignored China’s concerns about Taiwan and continues to increase military and diplomatic support for the island. In September, President Biden approved a $567 million arms package for Taiwan.
The US military is also openly planning for a war with China over Taiwan despite the risk of any direct US-China war turning nuclear. The US Navy recently unveiled a plan to prepare its forces for war with China by 2027.
Pathetic willywaving by globocop and his wee mate.
As someone who lives outside of Vancouver, why in the actual s**t is one of our ships dicking about on the far side of the planet when we have the world's longest coastline right here ????
When China proclaims re-annexation of "rebel province" and proceeds to its total siege, it will almost certainly declare unilateral war zone including all the strait and this will not happen anymore, just as US/NATO ships don't get close to Crimea. You can't enforce a blockade without sinking whatever warships dare to challenge it.
“You can’t enforce a blockade without sinking whatever warships dare to challenge it.”
Which is why the PLA Navy can’t enforce a blockade.
My take is that they will. The Chinese Navy is definitely superior in their area (where they also have air and missile superiority) to anything the USA can deploy. They will take the lesser islands, sink the Taiwanese fleet, shoot down the Taiwanese air force and bomb systematically all military bases… but avoid invading the main island or bombing civil areas. For China the greatest no-no is to harm the Chinese civilians in Taiwan, they just need to bring them to a situation where they have to negotiate a Hong-Kong-like status.
The PLA Navy is working toward parity with the US fleet, and they have one advantage: They don’t have a bunch of obsolete stuff to maintain while building the navy of the future.
They might be able to enforce an embargo on Taiwan without all of their stuff getting turned into burning floating hulks by 2035-2040. They’re not stupid enough to think they could do it now.
If by “Chinese civilians in Taiwan” you mean “citizens of the People’s Republic of China in Taiwan,” are there really very many of those? They can’t subjugate the Taiwanese and force them to become PRC citizens without invading. And probably not then.
I mean people considered to be Chinese, especially the Han but also the Taiwan Aborigines, China does not want to harm them, not just out of good heart but mostly because it’d be an ethical-political liability if they did: it’s a civil war within the same nation after all, not some clearly “hostile other” that can more easily be demonized, it’s the same reason Russia tries to avoid civilian casualties in the Ukraine War: they consider them their brethren, just misguided by foreign manipulation. Even in Palestine, where the “hostile other” is much more clear (colonial “Jews”), we can see how the Resistance avoids targetting civilians as much as possible, while Israel (i.e. the USA) does exactly the opposite because they only aim to win by terror and pure genocide, they have absolutely zero ethics involved, unless there’s something you can call “demonic morals”, I guess.
As for the PRC Navy, it seems to me you have no idea what you’re talking about: they have more ships (although less tonnage) than the US Navy and they’re for sure the second best navy on Earth. That might not be enough for a distant battlefield like in Guam or whatever (unclear) but for an almost coastguard operation as is retaking Taiwan, where we have full support of all their missile and air power, that’s absolutely enough: nothing can get near Taiwan unless China allows.
The issues the US faces with its obsolege “gunboat diplomacy” style is that in the world of missiles and drones, coastal warfare (up to many hundreds or even thousands of miles offshore) belongs to land and air forces and not anymore to those hyper-obsolete aircraft carriers. Who controls the land controls the water and not anymore the other way around.
Taiwan would have to be “taken” before it could be “retaken.” It is not now and never has been subject to rule by the People’s Republic of China.
If it comes down to technical military questions and the answers you and I offer, I guess we’ll find out who has a better grasp of the kind of warfare involved. I tend to base my assessments of the PLA Navy’s capabilities on its own claims, fbut I suppose they COULD be hiding much greater capabilities than they admit to.
From the viewpoint of the only internationally recognized China (PRC, you can blame Nixon for that if you wish), Taiwan or the ROC is nothing but a rebel province, it does not even have any ethnic distinctiveness (since the island was colonized centuries ago by China) like what can have Catalonia or Kurdistan… or Tibet as well. The narrative of China is that it’s part of the single country (an internationally acknowledged claim) and that the only legitimate government of that country is the PRC (also an internationally acknowledged claim). From their viewpoint it’s a matter of mere “restoring order in a rebel province”, they could not do it in 1949 but they can definitely do it now (and they will).
The PLA Navy is very big and that’s a well known fact since more than a decade ago, and is not scattered around the globe (as is the US Navy) but what affects the most this scenario is that it is not any remote location relative to mainland China at all, while it is very distant from the USA. It’s not about only the navy but all the air and missile force, which are absolutely capable of sinking anything in those seas without using a single boat. I mean: we have seen what a rag-tag force like Yemen’s can do, right? You don’t want to risk facing their big brother (Iran, which also has massive missile capabilities), much less their mega-friend China. I wouldn’t at least, definitely not. The USA can fight near home or maybe in Europe, where many strong allies and extensive permanent deployment make it like almost home, but projecting force in Eurasia or Africa is another very different thing.