A U.S. Coast Guard ship conducted a solo sailing of the Taiwan Strait earlier this week, the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said in a statement Thursday, with China criticizing the U.S. side for its alleged hyping of the transit.
The U.S. Coast Guard’s national security cutter Stratton made a "routine Taiwan Strait transit” on Tuesday “through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law,” the 7th Fleet said in a statement.
The rare solo passage of a U.S. Coast Guard vessel through the politically sensitive, 180-kilometer strait that separates China from Taiwan, came just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken became the first top American diplomat to visit the Middle Kingdom in nearly five years.