US warship transits Taiwan Strait after Biden-Xi summit

The passage through the Taiwan Strait by the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius was a routine transit, the U.S. Seventh Fleet said.

The voyage, the 11th declared freedom of navigation exercise of the year, "demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific," it said in a statement.

The latest transit came after U.S. President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping traded strong warnings on the future of Taiwan at a virtual summit earlier this month.

Chinese state media reported after the summit that Xi cautioned Biden that encouraging Taiwanese independence would be "playing with fire."

U.S. warships periodically conduct exercises in the strait, often triggering angry responses from Beijing, which claims Taiwan and surrounding waters as its own territory.

The U.S. and many other countries view the route as international waters open to all.

A growing number of U.S. allies have transited the route as Beijing intensifies its military threats towards Taiwan and solidifies its control over the South China Sea.

British, Canadian, French and Australian warships have all made passages through the Taiwan Strait in recent years, sparking protests from China.

Collin Koh, a research fellow at Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, keeps a database of declared U.S. transits through the Taiwan Straits.

Nine were conducted in 2019 followed by 15 in 2020. So far this year there have been 11, including the USS Milius crossing.