US to send warship via Taiwan strait

singapore/washington — The United States is considering a new operation to send warships through the Taiwan Strait, US officials tell Reuters, a mission aimed at ensuring free passage through the strategic waterway but which risks heightening tensions with China.

The US Navy conducted a similar mission in the strait’s international waters in July and any repeat would be seen in self-ruled Taiwan as a fresh expression of support by President Donald Trump’s government.

The US military declined comment and US officials who discussed the deliberations, which have not been previously reported, did so on condition of anonymity. They did not discuss the potential timing for any fresh passage through the strait.

China views Taiwan as a wayward province and has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island. It raised concerns over US policy towards Taiwan in talks this week with US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis in Singapore.

Even as Washington mulls ordering a fresh passage through the strait, it has been trying to explain to Beijing that its policies toward Taiwan are unchanged.

Mattis delivered that message to China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe personally on Thursday, on the sidelines of an Asian security forum.

“Minister Wei raised Taiwan and concerns about our policy. The Secretary reassured Minister Wei that we haven’t changed our Taiwan policy, our one China policy,” said Randall Schriver, a US assistant secretary of defence who helps guide Pentagon policy in Asia.

“So it was, I think, a familiar exchange.”

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is the island’s main source of arms. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.

Taiwan is only one of a growing number of flashpoints in the USChina relationship, which also include a bitter trade war, USsanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea. —