Canadian warship passes through Taiwan Strait, drawing China's ire
A Canadian warship has passed through the Taiwan Strait, drawing ire in China.
The passage of Canadian warship HMCS Montreal prompted the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to put its air and naval forces on alert, Naval Senior Captain Li Xi said, adding it was monitoring the situation.
Li said the Canadian government had “publicly hyped up” the situation and that its actions “undermined peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
According to a PLA statement published on the Eastern Theater Command’s official WeChat account, Chinese forces were maintaining “a high test of readiness at all times” and were prepared to respond to any threats and provocations.
The PLA has been increasing its presence around Chinese Taipei over the past few years, due to the United States and Western allies' provocations by naval vessels through both the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
The PLA statement followed an announcement on Wednesday by the Canadian Joint Operations Command that the Montreal had “recently conducted a routine transit through the Taiwan Strait”.
The Canadian warship's passage through the Taiwan Strait comes just two weeks after Ottawa's top diplomat visited Beijing.
Melanie Joly's three-day trip to Beijing was the first official visit by a Canadian foreign minister since the arrest of Huawei's CFO and the “two Michaels” in 2018 that sent bilateral relations into a deep freeze.
Joly was welcomed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China's top diplomat told his Canadian counterpart that there was “no fundamental conflict of interest” between the two countries.
Wang urged Joly to “seriously reflect” on the cause of the two countries' strained relationship, if she wanted to ameliorate the ties between them.
The Ottawa-Beijing relationship has deteriorated in recent years largely due to the Canadian arrest in 2018 of a top Huawei Technologies executive in response to a US extradition request, followed by China’s arrest of two Canadian citizens on espionage charges.
The detentions of the three individuals, namely Chinese Meng Wanzhou and Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, caused a tense diplomatic clash involving Canada, China and the United States.
All three were released in September 2021. Meng, who was the daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecom giant, returned to China on September 25, 2021.
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