China sends sole aircraft carrier into Taiwan Strait
Liaoning, CHINA sent its sole aircraft carrier into the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said, a provocative move that signals China’s growing naval strength and comes after Taiwan’s president spoke last month to President-elect Donald Trump, raising tensions between Beijing and Taipei.
In a statement, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, entered the island’s air-defense identification zone at 7am Wednesday, sailing north in the centre of the strait, which separates Taiwan from the mainland.
Taiwan, considered by Beijing to be a Chinese province, has been ruled separately since 1949, when the defeated forces of nationalist leader Chiang Kaishek fled to the island following their defeat on the mainland by the communists.
The Liaoning, commissioned in 2012 and built from a Soviet hull, is China’s first aircraft carrier. In past decades, the United States has shown its resolve to defend Taiwan by sailing carriers through the strait, although the practice is rare. In 1995, the aircraft carrier Nimitz transited the Taiwan Strait amid heightened tensions resulting from mainland missile tests in the waters.
‘Looming challenges’
China’s move comes just a week before the January 20 inauguration of Trump as president, posing a delicate test for the incoming administration.
Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, said in a news conference yesterday that the Taiwanese-Chinese relationship in the coming year would face “increasing uncertainty, looming risks and challenges.”
Ma said the Taiwanese government and “independence forces” in Taiwan had “seriously threatened the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait” by denying the One China consensus and said China would “resolutely safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”