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US sends two warships through Taiwan Strait, first transit since Pelosi trip
The guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Chancellorsville were on Sunday making the voyage “through waters where high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law,” the US 7th Fleet in Japan said in a statement.
It said the transit was “ongoing” and that there had been “no interference from foreign military forces so far.”
“These ships (are transiting) through a corridor in the strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state. The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows,” it said.
The strait is a 110-mile (180-kilometer) stretch of water that separates the democratic self-ruled island of Taiwan from mainland China.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite China’s ruling Communist Party never having controlled the island — and considers the strait part of its “internal waters.”
The US Navy, however, says most of the strait is in international waters.
The Navy cites an international law that defines territorial waters as extending 12 nautical miles (22.2 kilometers) from a country’s coastline and regularly sends its warships through the strait in what it calls freedom of navigation operations, including recent voyages by the guided missile destroyers USS Benfold and USS Port Royal.
Those transits drew angry responses from Beijing.
“The frequent provocations and showing-off by the US fully demonstrate that the US is the destroyer of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the creator of security risks in the Taiwan Strait,” Col. Shi Yi, spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, said after the Benfold’s transit on July 19.
Beijing has ramped up military maneuvers in the strait — and the skies above it — following the visit by Pelosi to the island earlier this month.
Within minutes of Pelosi landing in Taiwan on August 2, the PLA announced four days of military exercises in six zones encircling the island.
The maneuvers included launching ballistic missiles into waters around Taiwan, numerous Chinese warships steaming in the Taiwan Strait and dozens of PLA warplanes breaching the median line — the midway point between mainland China and Taiwan that Beijing says it does not recognize but had largely respected.
Since those exercises officially ended, PLA warplanes have continued to cross the median line daily, usually in double-digit numbers, according to statistics from Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. From August 8, the last of the four days of drills announced the night Pelosi landed in Taiwan, through August 22, between five and 21 PLA aircraft crossed the median line each day.
In July, the month before Pelosi’s trip, Chinese warplanes crossed the median line just once, with an unspecified number of jets, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.
In addition, Taiwan reports between five and 14 PLA warships have been seen in the waters surrounding Taiwan.
The PLA’s exercises have been continuing this week, part of what is normally a busy season for Chinese drills.
China’s Eastern Theater Command said on Friday it had conducted “joint combat-readiness security patrols and combat training exercises involving troops of multiple services and arms in the waters and airspace” around Taiwan.
That announcement came after US Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the latest member of Congress to visit Taiwan defying pressure from Beijing, saying, “I will not be bullied by Communist China into turning my back on the island.”
In tweets Friday morning, the US senator, who does not represent the Biden administration, reiterated her support for Taiwan.
“I will never kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party,” she said in one. “I will continue to stand with the (Taiwanese) and their right to freedom and democracy. Xi Jinping doesn’t scare me,” she added later, referring to China’s leader.
Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, told CNN last week that Beijing’s response to the Pelosi visit to Taiwan has been “an overreaction.”
“We do not believe there should be a crisis in US-China relations over the visit — the peaceful visit — of the speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan … it was a manufactured crisis by the government in Beijing,” Burns said in an interview from the US Embassy.
It is now “incumbent upon the government here in Beijing to convince the rest of the world that it will act peacefully in the future,” the ambassador said.
“I think there’s a lot of concern around the world that China has now become an agent of instability in the Taiwan Strait and that’s not in anyone’s interest,” he said.
Other US officials had said Washington would not be changing the way the US military operates in the region.
“We’ll continue to fly, sail, and operate where international law allows, consistent with our longstanding commitment to freedom of navigation, and that includes conducting standard air and maritime transits through the Taiwan Strait in the next few weeks,” Kurt Campbell, US President Joe Biden’s coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, told reporters at the White House on August 12.
Chinese Ambassador to Washington Qin Gang said last week that the US transits only intensify tensions.
“I do call on American colleagues to exercise restraint, not to do anything to escalate the tension,” Qin told reporters in Washington. “If there’s any move damaging China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, China will respond.”
China’s Military Exercises Showcase Modern Fighting Force Preparing for Possible War in the Taiwan Strait
What the drills demonstrated, military analysts said, is the progress China has made coordinating different branches of its armed services, a hallmark of a modern military. China appeared to lack the military assets to impose a total blockade on Taiwan, they said, but Beijing showed it had enough maritime firepower to severely disrupt the island’s economy.
The exercises were seen as a particular success for the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command, the main regional command responsible for Taiwan that was created in a military reorganization in 2016 to improve the ability to conduct joint operations, according to M. Taylor Fravel, a specialist on the Chinese military at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also noted that the drills were one of the few times China has provided so much detail about an exercise.
“The ability to conduct joint operations around Taiwan has been a driver of China’s military strategy and force modernization for more than two decades,” Mr. Fravel said. “We should not be surprised by what the PLA is doing, how it is doing it or what it has accomplished.”
The last time China fought a war was a failed attempt in 1979 to defeat Vietnam in a three-week border clash. While this wasn’t a conflict situation, the exercises served as a large-scale dress-rehearsal for any combat operations in the Taiwan Strait, one of the most dangerous flashpoints of the 21st century.
The drills also reaffirmed before the eyes of the world President
Xi Jinping’s
intent to turn a sprawling military industrial complex into a cohesive fighting force that, one day, might dominate the Asia Pacific.
A Chinese military vessel near Pingtan Island off Fujian province on Friday.
Photo:
hector retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
China’s exercises featured fighter and bomber sorties, along with naval maneuvers, and they showcased what is believed to have been the first time China has launched missiles over the Island of Taiwan. The People’s Liberation Army said Sunday it had conducted joint training in waters and airspace near the island to test its capacity for striking ground targets and engaging in long-range aerial combat.
The exercises kicked off as an angry Chinese government protested the visit to Taipei earlier last week by U.S. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi.
A television broadcast in Hong Kong of a missile launch during the military exercises.
Photo:
isaac lawrence/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The exercises started at noon on Thursday in six zones that effectively encircle Taiwan. Several of the zones face the island’s biggest commercial ports and overlap with what Taipei claims as its territorial waters, coming within 12 miles of its coastline in what some military analysts have compared with a temporary blockade.
All the main services took part in the exercises, according to Chinese press reports, including the army, navy, air force, the rocket force and support and logistical forces.
The U.S. is Taiwan’s longstanding security partner and is obliged by law to make sure Taiwan can defend itself. For decades, the U.S. has maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity not saying whether it would directly intervene in a conflict. Though the White House says that policy hasn’t changed, President Biden has said the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China tried to invade. For its part, Beijing viewed Mrs. Pelosi’s visit as a another sign of the U.S. backtracking on previous commitments to limit ties with the island.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei last week.
Photo:
Wang Yu Ching/Taiwan Presidentia/Zuma Press
Since the end of last week, PLA officials haven’t returned calls from their Pentagon counterparts, the Pentagon said.
“The PRC has chosen to overreact and use the Speaker’s visit as a pretext to increase provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait,” Todd Breasseale, acting Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. “Part of this overreaction has been strictly limiting its defense engagements when any responsible state would recognize that we need them now the most.”
U.S. defense officials said it would be weeks before they will finish analyzing all the information they learned watching China’s exercises, particularly how its navy maneuvers and commands its ships while conducting a joint operation with its air force.
In addition to surveying by air, the U.S. kept an aircraft carrier, the USS
Ronald Reagan,
and its accompanying ships in the region throughout the exercises.
A Beijing-backed group, South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, said on its
account that the U.S. deployed surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to the area, including RC-135s, P-8s and E-3s, with KC-135 tankers on hand for midair refueling. The Pentagon declined to comment.
A CCTV news broadcast in Beijing included a map of the military exercise locations around Taiwan.
Photo:
THOMAS PETER/REUTERS
Military analysts say that while China deployed some of its latest weapons for the exercises there appeared to be no military hardware that wasn’t already known about. And some said China didn’t use enough ships to show they could impede ship traffic from reaching Taiwan.
Instead, it used ships like destroyers and cruisers during its exercise, which aren’t ideal for conducting a blockade, naval observers said. Even though they exercised with as many as 50 ships, the Chinese navy didn’t use enough smaller, more agile ships, like frigates, that could better sustain something like a blockade around Taiwan, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
“What we saw during the exercise is that China did not use enough ships to divert those coming in, inspect or hold them and cut off access to Taiwanese ports. They have enough to quickly inspect ships coming in and slow down the Taiwanese economy,” Mr. Clark said. “This was more like a demonstration of a quarantine than showing they can cut off Taiwan. But for China, it would be a good first step.”
Christopher Twomey, an associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said potentially useful intelligence that might be gained from the exercises included assessments of how missile brigades coordinated with each other and conducted evaluations of battle damage from the strikes. Such information could be obtained from intercepted communications, he said.
“Presumably the U.S. intelligence community is getting lots of material from these activities from classified sources about ‘down in the weeds’ capabilities and operational practices,” Mr. Twomey said.
Several close observers of the Chinese military noted that the drills fell far short of a full rehearsal for an invasion of Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing has said it would bring under its control. An attempt to seize and control the island would involve an amphibious invasion across the 100-mile wide Taiwan Strait, but there were no signs of the mobilization of amphibious forces during the latest exercises.
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What lingering impact will Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan have on U.S. relations with China? Join the conversation below.
The Chinese exercises were likely preplanned for a scenario in which Beijing wanted to demonstrate its resolve to fight a war over Taiwan, said Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. submarine warfare officer and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Mr. Shugart said China’s decision to hold exercises for the first time within maritime areas that Taiwan considers its territorial waters shows that Beijing’s military risk appetite had grown, but a true test of its ability to operate effectively as a single force would only come if it faced a response from Taiwanese or American forces.
“On balance, we are learning mostly about political intent: the Chinese are worried about the trend in U.S.-Taiwanese relations and their view that we are moving away from commitments made in the 1970s and reiterated by every administration since, that we don’t support an independent Taiwan,” Mr. Twomey said. “They are using military tools to communicate that there are military costs to these shifts in U.S. policy.”
—Charles Hutzler contributed to this article.
Write to Alastair Gale at alastair.gale@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com
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China claims ‘precision missile strikes’ in Taiwan Strait
BEIJING (AP) — China says it conducted “precision missile strikes” in the Taiwan Strait on Thursday as part of military exercises that have raised tensions in the region to their highest level in decades.
China earlier announced that military exercises by its navy, air force and other departments were underway in six zones surrounding Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
The drills were prompted by a visit to the island by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week and are intended to advertise China’s threat to attack the self-governing island republic. Along with its moves to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, China has long threatened military retaliation over moves by the island to solidify its de-facto independence with the support of key allies including the U.S.
“Long-range armed live fire precision missile strikes were carried out on selected targets in the eastern area of the Taiwan Strait,” the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army, the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, said in a statement on its social media platform.
“The expected outcome was achieved,” it added. No other details were given.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it tracked the firing of Chinese Dongfeng series missiles beginning around 1:56 p.m. on Thursday. It said in a statement it used various early warning surveillance systems to track the missile launches, which were directed at waters northeast and southwest of Taiwan.
Earlier during the day, Taiwa’s Defense ministry said its forces were on alert and monitoring the situation, while seeking to avoid escalating tensions. Civil defense drills have also been held and notices were placed on designated air raid shelters.
China’s “irrational behavior” intends to alter the status quo and disrupt regional peace and stability, the ministry said.
“The three service branches will combine efforts with all the people to jointly safeguard national security and territorial integrity” while adapting to the situation as it develops, the statement said.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported the exercises were joint operations focused on “blockade, sea target assault, strike on ground targets, and airspace control.”
While the U.S. has not said it would intervene, it has bases and forward-deployed assets in the area, including aircraft carrier battle groups. U.S. law requires the government to treat threats to Taiwan, including blockades, as matters of “grave concern.”
The drills are due to run from Thursday to Sunday and include missile strikes on targets in the seas north and south of the island in an echo of the last major Chinese military drills aimed at intimidating Taiwan’s leaders and voters held in 1995 and 1996.
While China has given no word on numbers of troops and military assets involved, the exercises appear to be the largest held near Taiwan in geographical terms.
The exercises involved troops from the navy, air force, rocket force, strategic support force and logistic support force, Xinhua reported.
Chinese warplanes buzz line dividing Taiwan Strait before expected Pelosi visit – source
A newspaper front page reporting about U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pictured in Taipei, Taiwan, August 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ann Wang
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TAIPEI, Aug 2 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was expected to arrive in Taipei later on Tuesday, people briefed on the matter said, as several Chinese warplanes flew close to the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait, a source told Reuters.
China has repeatedly warned against Pelosi going to Taiwan, which it claims as its own, and the United States said on Monday that it would not be intimidated by Chinese “sabre rattling” over the visit.
In addition to Chinese planes flying close to the median line of the sensitive waterway on Tuesday morning, several Chinese warships had remained close to the unofficial dividing line since Monday, the source told Reuters.
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The source said both Chinese warships and aircraft “squeezed” the median line on Tuesday morning, an unusual move the person described as “very provocative.”
The person said the Chinese aircraft repeatedly conducted tactical moves of briefly “touching” the median line and circling back to the other side of the strait on Tuesday morning, while Taiwanese aircraft were on standby nearby.
Neither side’s aircraft normally cross the median line.
In a statement on Tuesday, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said it has a full grasp of military activities near Taiwan and will appropriately dispatch forces in reaction to “enemy threats”.
China’s defense and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen, which lies opposite Taiwan and is home to a large military presence, residents reported sightings of armoured vehicles on the move on Tuesday and posted pictures online.
Chinese social media was abuzz with both trepidation about potential conflict and patriotic fervour over the prospect of unification with Taiwan, and the topic of Pelosi’s visit was the top-trending item on the Twitter-like Weibo.
One person familiar with Pelosi’s itinerary said that most of her planned meetings, including with President Tsai Ing-wen, were scheduled for Wednesday, and that it was possible that her delegation would only arrive in Taiwan early on Wednesday.
“Everything is uncertain,” the person said.
Taiwan newspaper Liberty Times said Pelosi’s delegation was due to arrive at 10:20 p.m. (1420 GMT) on Tuesday, without naming sources.
Pelosi was visiting Malaysia on Tuesday, having begun her Asia tour in Singapore on Monday. Her office said she will also go to South Korea and Japan, but made no mention of a Taiwan visit.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it had no comment on reports of Pelosi’s travel plans, but the White House – which would not confirm the trip – said she had the right to go.
Beijing’s responses could include firing missiles near Taiwan, large-scale air or naval activities, or further “spurious legal claims” such as China’s assertion that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Monday.
“We will not take the bait or engage in sabre rattling. At the same time, we will not be intimidated,” Kirby said.
‘GROSS INTERFERENCE’
Four sources said Pelosi was scheduled to meet a small group of activists who are outspoken about China’s human rights record on Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting is likely to take place at the National Human Rights Museum at New Taipei City, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said it would be “a gross interference in China’s internal affairs” if Pelosi visits Taiwan, and warned that “the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will never sit idly by.”
Asked what kind of measures the PLA might take, Zhao said: “if she dares to go, then let us wait and see.”
China views visits by U.S. officials to Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by Beijing, as sending an encouraging signal to the pro-independence camp in the island. Washington does not have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is bound by U.S. law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.
A visit by Pelosi, who is second in the line of succession to the U.S. presidency and a long-time critic of China, would come amid worsening ties between Washington and Beijing.
The White House has dismissed China’s rhetoric as groundless and inappropriate.
‘RIGHT TO VISIT’
Kirby said that nothing about Pelosi’s possible trip changed U.S. policy toward Taiwan, and that Beijing was well aware the division of powers within the U.S. government meant Pelosi would make her own decisions about the visit.
“The speaker has the right to visit Taiwan,” he told the White House briefing.
During a phone call last Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned U.S. President Joe Biden that Washington should abide by the one-China principle and “those who play with fire will perish by it”.
Biden told Xi that U.S. policy on Taiwan had not changed and that Washington strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and has never renounced using force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims and says only its people can decide the island’s future.
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Reporting by Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu;
Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Stephen Coates & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
U.S. rebuffs China by calling Taiwan Strait an international waterway
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Tuesday backed Taiwan’s assertion that the strait separating the island from China is an international waterway, a further rebuff to Beijing’s claim to exercise sovereignty over the strategic passage.
The Taiwan Strait has been a frequent source of military tension since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the communists, who established the People’s Republic of China.
In recent years, U.S. warships, and on occasion those from allied nations such as Britain and Canada, have sailed through the strait, drawing Beijing’s anger.
On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry said the country “has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait” and called it “a false claim when certain countries call the Taiwan Strait ‘international waters’.”
Commenting on Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in an email to Reuters: “The Taiwan Strait is an international waterway, meaning that the Taiwan Strait is an area where high seas freedoms, including freedom of navigation and overflight, are guaranteed under international law.”
The world has “an abiding interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and we consider this central to the security and prosperity of the broader Indo-Pacific region,” Price added.
He reiterated U.S. concerns about China’s “aggressive rhetoric and coercive activity regarding Taiwan” and said the United States “would continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, and that includes transiting through the Taiwan Strait.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou called China’s position a “fallacy.”
On Wednesday, Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said the strait was by “no means China’s inland sea”.
“China’s ambition to swallow up Taiwan has never stopped or been concealed; the Taiwan Strait is a maritime area for free international navigation,” he told reporters.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and views the island as an inherent part of Chinese territory.
Taiwan says China has no right to speak for it or claim sovereignty, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their own future and that the People’s Republic of China has never controlled any part of the island.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Humeyra Pamuk and Michael Martina; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
China, Russia navy ships jointly sail through Japan strait
TOKYO, Oct 19 (Reuters) – A group of 10 naval vessels from China and Russia sailed through a strait separating Japan’s main island and its northern island of Hokkaido on Monday, the Japanese government said, adding that it is closely watching such activities.
It was the first time Japan has confirmed the passage of Chinese and Russian naval vessels sailing together through the Tsugaru Strait, which separates the Sea of Japan from the Pacific.
While the strait is regarded as international waters, Japan’s ties with China have long been plagued by conflicting claims over a group of tiny East China Sea islets. Tokyo has a territorial dispute with Moscow, as well.
“The government is closely watching Chinese and Russian naval vessels’ activities around Japan like this one with high interest,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki told a regular news conference on Tuesday.
“We will continue to do our utmost in our surveillance activity in waters and airspace around Japan.”
A Japanese Defence Ministry spokesperson said there had been no violation of Japanese territorial waters and no international rules were broken by the passage of the vessels.
Russia and China held joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan as part of naval cooperation between the two countries from Oct. 14-17 involving warships and support vessels from Russia’s Pacific Fleet.
Moscow and Beijing have cultivated closer military and diplomatic ties in recent years at a time when their relations with the West have soured.
Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; editing by Richard Pullin
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
UK sends warship through Taiwan Strait for first time in more than a decade | UK news
Britain sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Monday for the first time since 2008, a move that challenges Beijing’s claim to the sensitive waterway and marks a rare voyage by a non-US military vessel.
HMS Richmond, a frigate deployed with Britain’s aircraft carrier strike group, sailed through the strait on a trip from Japan to Vietnam, Britain’s defence ministry said.
“Wherever the Royal Navy operate, they do so in full compliance with international law,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The UK has a range of enduring security interests in the Indo-Pacific and many important bilateral defence relationships, this deployment is a sign of our commitment to regional security,” it added.
Britain said it was the first time one of its warships had travelled through the narrow waterway separating Taiwan and mainland China since 2008, when HMS Kent made the voyage.
US warships regularly conduct “freedom of navigation” exercises in the strait and trigger angry responses from Beijing, which claims Taiwan and surrounding waters – and almost all of the South China Sea.
The US and most other countries view those areas as international waters that should be open to all vessels.
China’s initial response to the British warship’s passage was muted on Monday.
“We hope the relevant countries can do more to build mutual trust between countries and uphold peace and security in the region,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters.
Until recently, Washington was the main global power willing to sail through the Taiwan Strait.
But a growing number of US allies have transited the route as Beijing intensifies its military threats towards Taiwan and solidifies its control over the disputed South China Sea.
Canadian, French and Australian warships have all made voyages through the Taiwan Strait in recent years, sparking protests from China.
A Royal Navy survey ship, HMS Enterprise, transited through the strait in 2019 but it was not a warship.
Taiwan’s defence minister Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed to reporters that a foreign vessel had sailed through the waterway but did not state which country it was from.
Taiwan’s 23 million people live under constant threat of invasion by authoritarian China, which has vowed to seize the island one day – by force if necessary.
Beijing has stepped up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, who views the island as “already independent”.
Last year, Chinese military jets made a record 380 incursions into Taiwan’s defence zone, and the number of incursions for the first eight months of this year has already exceeded 400.
Feast Your Eyes on the 12 Winning Astronomy Photographer of the Year Images
There were two joint winners for the Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation, both of which used inventive techniques in their compositions. One of them—“Celestial Fracture” by Leonardo Di Maggio—is an assembly of images of Saturn, its moons, and its rings. All the images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft between 2004 and 2007. Together, the images are a peculiar combination of straight lines (mostly from the rings) and curves (from the planet’s spherical shape). All in black and white, they allow the viewer to focus on the planet’s geometries without being distracted by its colors.
“A spectacular dance between science and art,” said Imad Ahmed, a competition judge and the director of the New Crescent Society, in a Royal Observatory Greenwich statement. “We associate Saturn with its timeless rings, but the quasi-cubist treatment, with its awkward angles, offered a refreshing perspective that really captured the judges’ imagination.”
The other winner is “Another Cloudy Day on Jupiter” by Sergio Díaz Ruiz of Spain. The image’s name pretty much speaks for itself: It’s a close-up look at a tranche of our favorite gas giant, a slurry of orange, rust, and off-white whorls. The image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on a number of different channels and color edited.
U.S. warship transits Taiwan Strait after Chinese assault drills
The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd transits alongside the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt while participating in Exercise Northern Edge 2019 in the Gulf of Alaska May 16, 2019. Picture taken May 16, 2019. U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Sean Lynch/Handout via REUTERS./File Photo
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) – A U.S. warship and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, the latest in what Washington calls routine operations through the sensitive waterway that separates Taiwan from China, which claims the self-ruled island.
The passage comes amid a spike in military tensions in the past two years between Taiwan and China, and follows Chinese assault drills last week, with warships and fighter jets exercising off the island’s southwest and southeast.
The Kidd, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, accompanied by the Coast Guard cutter Munro, transited “through international waters in accordance with international law,” the U.S. Navy said in a statement.
“The ships’ lawful transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows,” it said.
The U.S. Navy has been conducting such operations every month or so, angering China, which sees Taiwan as its territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the democratic island under its control.
China on Saturday called the move “provocative,” saying the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army organized troops to follow, monitor and guard the course of the U.S. ships operations.
“The U.S. has frequently carried out similar provocative acts, which are of a very bad nature, fully showing that it is the biggest destroyer of peace and stability and the biggest cause of security risks in the Taiwan Strait. We firmly oppose and strongly condemn this,” defense ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei said in a statement.
“Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. The Taiwan issue is China’s internal affair and allows no external interference. We call on the U.S. to recognize the situation, stop provocation and abide by the One China principle and the provisions of the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques.”
The United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but is its most important international backer and a major seller of arms to the island.
Taiwan and the United States in March signed an agreement establishing a Coast Guard Working Group to coordinate policy, following China’s passing of a law that allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels. read more
Friday was not the first time a U.S. Coast Guard cutter has sailed through the Taiwan Strait.
But it was a reminder that it is now keeping vessels in the region and “engaging in more joint training and law enforcement diplomacy to help strengthen partner nation capacity vis-a-vis Chinese encroachments,” said Greg Poling, a maritime security expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
China’s state-controlled media have seized on the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in recent weeks to portray U.S. support for Taiwan and regional allies as fickle.
But U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has been quick to dismiss any comparison between Afghanistan and the U.S. commitment to the Indo-Pacific.
Vice President Kamala Harris accused China of “bullying and excessive maritime claims” during trips to Vietnam and Singapore this week, the latest in a string of visits by top U.S. officials to the Indo-Pacific aimed at cementing U.S. commitment to the region.
Reporting by Michael Martina and Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by Emily Chow in Shanghai; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and William Mallard
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.