By Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI, June 23 (Reuters) – China’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, the Taiwanese defence ministry said, the first such mission in the sensitive waterway since April.
Taiwan, which Beijing views as its territory, reports almost daily Chinese military activity around the island in what Taipei views as an ongoing pressure campaign against the democratically elected government.
In a brief statement, the ministry said the Fujian had passed through the strait.
The military used “joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance methods to closely monitor it”, the ministry added, without elaborating.
It also showed a black-and-white picture of the ship taken from above, though there were no aircraft visible on its deck. It did not say exactly where or how the picture was taken.
China’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.
PRESSURE CAMPAIGN
China has this month begun using what Taiwan describes as a new pressure tactic, sending coast guard ships along the island’s east coast to create an impression of Chinese jurisdiction in those waters, to Taipei’s anger.
Speaking to the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Tuesday, Taipei’s top China policymaker said the government refuses to accept Beijing’s “endgame of unifying with Taiwan”.
“Although Taiwan faces compounded, intensifying and unprecedented pressure, our determination to safeguard our sovereignty and democratic system has never been so strong,” Mainland Affairs Council minister Chiu Chui-cheng said.
“On this point, there is no room for compromise. We will never succumb to the sabre-rattling and intensifying pressure from China. Taiwan will never surrender.”
The Fujian is last known to have sailed through the strait in mid-December, though the Liaoning, the oldest of China’s three carriers, transited the waterway in April.
The Fujian has a flat flight deck and electromagnetic catapults to launch aircraft that make it a potentially far more powerful naval weapon than China’s first two Russian-designed carriers.
The Fujian is able to carry significantly more, and heavier-armed, jet fighters than the Liaoning and Shandong carriers, which are smaller and rely on ramps to launch aircraft.
China says it alone has sovereignty over the strait, a major maritime artery for cargo traffic. Taiwan and the United States say it is an international waterway.
The U.S. navy sends warships through the strait every few months, as do occasionally some U.S. allies.
Taiwan’s government says only the island’s people can decide their future.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Andrew Cawthorne)
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