Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jason Waite / US Navy 7th Fleet
- The missile destroyer USS John Finn has sailed through the Taiwan Strait, triggering Beijing's ire.
- This is the third sailing of a US Navy destroyer through the highly-contentious area since Biden took office.
- China has responded to the destroyer's presence, vowing a swift response to all threats.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
A US Navy destroyer has sailed through the Taiwan Strait in what it calls a "routine" exercise – a move that has once again triggered Beijing's ire.
According to a statement from the US Navy's 7th Fleet, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John Finn was conducting a routine transit per international law.
"The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military will continue to fly, sail, and operate anywhere international law allows," the statement said.
The Chinese government has issued a strong response to the destroyer's passage through the strait, Sina News reported.
"This move by the US Navy has artificially created risk factors across the Taiwan Strait and deliberately undermined regional peace and stability. We firmly oppose this," the government's statement read. "Our troops in the theater are always on high alert and are ready to respond to all threats and provocations."
The strait is a 180-km wide body of water that separates Taiwan and continental Asia. It's a widely contested area as it links the South China Sea to the East China Sea in the north.
The US and its allies view it as international waters, and US warships are known to regularly conduct exercises in the strait, many of which trigger Beijing's ire.
This is the third time a US warship has traveled through the strait since Biden took office, according to Taiwan News.
In early February, the USS John S. McCain sailed through the Taiwan Strait to carry out an operation near the Paracel Islands.
At the time, the Chinese protested the destroyer's passage through the strait and were "closely monitoring" the ship.
On February 25, the USS Curtis Wilbur also traversed the waterway.
The USS John Finn's transit happened as Beijing accused Admiral Philip Davidson of attempting to "hype up" the military threat that China posed. Davidson is a four-star admiral in the US Navy and is currently serving as the 25th commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command.
Davidson had warned at a Senate committee hearing a day earlier that an invasion of Taiwan could be "imminent," and happen within the next six years to a decade.
"I worry that [China] is accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order... by 2050," Davidson said, according to The Guardian.
China's President Xi Jinping has been open about his intention to "reunite" China with Taiwan, and his plans appear to have escalated over the past year. According to an SCMP report, People's Liberation Army jets made a record 380 incursions into Taiwan's airspace in 2020 alone.
In 2019, Xi said that taking Taiwan was "an inevitable requirement for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people," according to the BBC.
Insider has reached out to the US Navy for comment.