The Sazanami sailed south through the 180-kilometre waterway with ships from Australia and New Zealand.Japan has sent a destroyer through the Taiwan Strait for the first time, Japanese media reported, amid increasing military activity around Japan by China.
The Sazanami entered the strait from the East China Sea on Wednesday morning, spending more than 10 hours sailing south to complete the passage, public broadcaster NHK and the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported on Thursday.
The passage was conducted with naval ships from Australia and New Zealand ahead of planned drills in the disputed South China Sea, the reports said.
Japan’s top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to comment on the reports at a regular briefing because they concerned military operations. There was no immediate confirmation from the Ministry of Defence.
New Zealand’s navy confirmed its ship, the HMNZS Aotearoa, had sailed through the strait with HMAS Sydney from the Australian Navy. A spokesman told the AFP news agency its first transit in seven years was to assert the “right of freedom of navigation”.
The three ships’ transit comes a week after the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning sailed for the first time between two Japanese islands near Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its own.
Tokyo said the ships entered its contiguous zone, an area up to 24 nautical miles (about 44km) from the Japanese coast, and called the incident “totally unacceptable”. China said it had complied with international law.
In late August, Toky …
