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An American ship in the Taiwan Strait amid tensions with Beijing

An American warship sailed in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, at the risk of angering China at a time when its relations with the United States are straining a little more, notably because of the coronavirus.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a tweet Thursday that the USS McCampbell, a destroyer carrying guided missiles, had sailed the Strait the previous day.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense spoke of a “routine mission” in this stretch of sea that separates China from the island that Beijing sees as a rebel province called to return to the national fold, by force if necessary. This navigation comes against the backdrop of Sino-American tensions, in particular due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while Beijing has not hesitated recently to send its fighter planes and its ships near the island.

US President Donald Trump uses the term “Chinese virus” daily to refer to the coronavirus first detected in December in Wuhan, China. Despite the admonitions from Beijing, which refuses to be stigmatized, he assumed this formula, believing that it was factual, and accused the Chinese authorities of having delayed sharing information on the epidemic.

Washington, for its part, recently summoned the Chinese ambassador to the United States after a Chinese official had relayed a conspiracy theory according to which the American army could have introduced the new coronavirus in Wuhan, from which the epidemic.

Taiwan and Beijing have lived a separate fate for 70 years, since the Communists proclaimed the People’s Republic of China, when the nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek had withdrawn to the island. Relations between the two sides of the strait have tightened since the coming to power in Taiwan in 2016 of Tsai Ing-wen who refuses to accept the principle of a “single China” defended by Beijing.

China has uprooted, in the past four years, seven countries allied with the island which is no longer recognized by only 15 states in the world, mostly from the poor nations of Latin America and the Pacific. The Taiwan Strait has been a very sensitive region for decades.

Like many other nations, the United States considers this inlet to be part of international waters. Washington regularly sends boats there to assert this principle of “freedom of navigation”. At the end of December, Beijing sent the “Shandong”, its first aircraft carrier of 100% Chinese design, to the strait.

An American warship sailed in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, at the risk of angering China at a time when its relations with the United States are straining a little more, notably because of the coronavirus.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a tweet on Thursday that the USS McCampbell, a destroyer carrying guided missiles, had taken the …

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