A US Navy reconnaissance jet flew over the Taiwan Strait on Monday, in a maneuver intended to assert the right to operate in international airspace despite strong objections from the Chinese military. In a statement Monday, the US 7th Fleet said the flight of the P-8A Poseidon over the waterway that separates China and the self-ruled island of Taiwan was conducted in accordance with international law, demonstrating “the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
But a spokesman for China’s Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Army Senior Col. Shi Yi, accused Washington of hyping the flight and inflaming tensions. The US flight “has deliberately disrupted the regional situation and jeopardized the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Shi said in a report on the PLA’s English language website.
