TOKYO, Sept. 26, 2024—For the first time in the post-WWII period, a Japanese warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and mainland China, adding tension to the Japan-China relationship and the East Asian region that’s strained even more by the Sept. 25 firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the recent murder of a Japaneses school children in China, Chinese military planes flying inside Japan’s airspace, and numerous other incidents.
China is deploying what analysts described as ‘gray zone tactics’ of repeatedly invading into an adversary’s territorial airspace and waters and their contiguous areas with false publicity of sovereignty over those areas.
China employed that tactic in waters around Senkaku Island, where Japanese fishermen used to live for centuries in the past.
Japanese media reports said that the destroyer ‘Sazanami’ passed through the Taiwan Strait from the East China Sea to south in the September 25 morning time and completed the sailing the same day night. Australian and New Zealand battleships also cruised through the strait, they said. German naval ships passed through the strait in September.
The Japan Self-Defense Navy plans a joint drill with the Australian and New Zealand warships from Sept. 26.
China claims the Taiwan Strait as its territorial waters, while the United States and other countries say it is an international water.
The Chinese defense ministry Sept. 25 announced that it fired an ICBM at 08:44 a.m. China time toward the Pacific ocean. The ICBM was carrying a dummy warhead, the ministry said. On Sept. 23 night, China announced setting the Philippines northwest, northeast, and Australia’s east waters as danger zones for what it argued as areas where ‘space dust’ would fall. The ICBM is rumored to be Dongfu 41 (DF41) that, with a range of up to 12,000 kilometers, can reach the U.S. mainland’s targets.
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