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.