After months of secretive planning, and preparing the crew to defend their ship if necessary, the Royal Canadian Navy has transited the Taiwan Strait.

As HMCS Ottawa entered the busy and strategically critical body of water at sunrise, it was flanked by three Chinese warships armed with missiles and torpedoes. They mirrored Ottawa’s moves for the entire 17-hour crossing.

Canada made the journey along with the USS Ralph Johnson, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, in what both countries describe as a freedom of navigation exercise.

  • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Canada doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a country. How anyone in Canada’s leadership thought this was a good idea, I don’t know.
    There’s an order of operations that should go down before going through.
    First recognize Taiwan.
    Then acknowledge their territorial waters.
    Instead, we get this cosplay of an act

    • jerkface@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      If we simply reject that fighting for Taiwan’s sovereignty was the sole motivation for this action, I think things make a lot more sense.

    • AmberPrince@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      More like territorial waters is 12 nautical miles for the coast so even if Taiwan was considered part of mainland China, the straight is like 90nm wide so a majority of it should be freely navigable by any ship. China doesn’t think so and claims the entire thing as territorial waters.

  • Armen12@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    China has been hit with the worst flooding in over 100 years and they concern themselves with territory they don’t own instead of actually fixing their own problems lol

    Perfect metaphor for the CCP

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Do you know anything about Chinese history? Governments have been overthrown because of their response to floods, not ownership of any particular island.

        It was also a common belief that natural disasters such as famine and flood were divine retributions bearing signs of Heaven’s displeasure with the ruler, so there would often be revolts following major disasters as the people saw these calamities as signs that the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven

          • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Uh, if they cared that much about Taiwan they would have taken it by now. They care more about economic stability than “unity”. If you have a degree in “Asian Studies” that includes the Warring States period, you wouldn’t know about political science or economics. You know, recent history?

            The “Mandate of Heaven” is just an idea, but they don’t want to go putting ideas of incompetent government in people’s heads. That’s why they either try to respond well to disasters or cover them up.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              It is your position that China doesn’t care about Taiwan. Really. I think you have allowed yourself to be baited in to a stupid position.