A Royal Navy frigate has sailed through the Taiwan Strait alongside a U.S. destroyer, ignoring warnings from Beijing that the transit amounted to provocation.
China’s Eastern Theater Command condemned the passage of HMS Richmond and USS Higgins, accusing them of “trouble-making and provocation.” The command said naval and air units were dispatched to monitor and issue warnings to the two ships.
The UK Ministry of Defence rejected the accusation, insisting the voyage was a routine exercise. “Wherever the Royal Navy operates, it does so in full compliance with international law and norms, and exercises freedom of navigation rights in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” the ministry said in a statement.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command echoed that position, stressing that “the ships transited through a corridor in the strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state. Navigational rights and freedoms in the Taiwan Strait should not be limited.”
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and regards the Taiwan Strait as internal waters. This interpretation is rejected by most Western nations, which view the 110-mile-wide channel as an international waterway linking the East and South China Seas. By asserting control over the strait, China seeks to restrict the movement of foreign naval forces and to reinforce its claim over Taiwan itself.
Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) are designed to challenge such claims. These transits demonstrate the willingness of navies like those of the U.S. and Britain to sail in areas they regard as international waters, sending a clear signal that excessive maritime claims will not go uncontested. FONOPs are carried out globally to push back against attempts to limit access to open seas.
The Taiwan Strait is particularly sensitive because it has become the symbolic front line of great power competition. For Washington, maintaining routine passage is about upholding the principle that no single nation can dictate access to such a vital waterway.
Awesome!
maybe give them the same reply that the Russians got and tell them to F OFF.
We should shut of some water ways, ie the channel.
No Russo Chinese or little boats.
Take a day off mate.
Just took a week off mate thanks , mind your own chum. 🍻🏴🏴🏴🏴🔥
Take another. Its needed.
Very constructive conversation Mr G .
I suppose you voted the tool makers son.
Blacksmiths are worth it.
We cannot shut the channel….
1) it’s classed as a strait and under international law that we helped create (and use all the time) anyone is allowed transit rights.
2) it’s half owned by the French who are not idiots, would just leave their side open and use it to lever shipping into their ports.
You must be more clever than the last bloke that wasted their time answering me..
1 you say the French are not idiots .I agree they send us the boats
2 you don’t realise when someone is joking .
3 well I’ll leave that for now.
Lee, it’s impossible to tell if anyone is joking via text.. I alway consider what a person says as serious unless they leave a wee hint, like adding someone utterly impossible or stupid or adding a funny face.
The thing about the channel and closing it to Russia is that I really don’t consider it “stupid” just geopolitically not possible because of international law.. personally if we could I would not let a single Russia flagged ship anywhere near UK waters.
Then we do agrree 🍻🍻😁🇬🇧
And in the same sense, we then wouldn’t send our ships anywhere near Russia or China?
The great thing about Russian is literally it has no strategic straits that would cause us an issue. China on the other hand is a major maritime power close to shipping lanes the UK uses and is a major trading partner so no China not, we are not yet at war with China. Russia on the other hand we are in a full non kinetic political war with because Russia deployed a band weapon of mass destruction in a UK city invaded a nation we had signed a security guarantee with, has blatantly threatened us with nuclear strikes and has attacked our infrastructure via sabotage… hell yes if there was any legal way we could get away with it that would not damage our interests I would ban every Russian flagged vessel from UK waters and happy watch them struggle around the North Sea and north Atlantic the long way around.
I wonder what the next generation of Chinese leadership will look like. Xi grew up with a weak China as his “schoolroom”. His father was purged in the 1960’s and he probably remembers the Cultural Revolution during his childhood as a truly formative event. He is 72 now and the men who will replace him in a decade or so are going to be of a generation that does not remember the Cultural Revolution, that does not remember a truly weak China. Will they be more confident of its future and less prone to feel the need to expand its influence? Will they look at the West and think that time is their friend, not conflict? The US and the EU are losing ground economically and culturally vs the rest of the world. Maybe China will view the long game as the better bet.
It’s a good point we never know what the next generation will bring.. China before Xia was very different, not so nationalist and slowly leaving communism.. Xia essentially is an extremist in his views and actions. We can hope sanity prevails before China throws the world into utter chaos.
Very good post!
Westerners think in terms of years, Russians think in terms of decades, and the Chinese think in terms of centuries. I guarantee you China is playing the long game. Bide your time, as Deng Xiaoping said.
Not so sure on this one you have to look at the present cultural drivers, which are all essentially communist party drivers as well as the personal goals of Xia himself and fundamentally the cult of Mao which holds sway over Chinese thinking to a profound extent.
Chinese communist party mythology has the need to unit as fundamentally core to Chinese prosperity and future “ The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been“ this cycle of suffering and rising his utterly engrained in the belief system of the CCP and Chinese people.
To predict how far they will push and when, you then need to understand where they believe they are in this narrative.
They believe that china divided or was divided at the beginning of the century of Humiliation which started in 1839 and ended in 1949 with the conquest of the mainland by the CCP.
The only remaining facet of this division that need to be made whole is Taiwan and the control of the china seas and the data set for this to be completed is 2049.
So on Oct 1 1949 as Mao Zedong stood on the threshold of Tiananmen gate and proclaimed the birth of the People’s Republic of China a new road was set the century of humiliation was over and the century of national renewal can begin.
This means that china will be United by 2049, no matter what the cost. It does not plan to wait centuries its on the move now, it knows three things
1) for Xia to be embedded in Chinese history and mythology alongside Mao ( and that is the man’s goal ) he must personally ensure china is United by 2049 and he is 72.
2) china will hit a massive maritime and naval point of advantage at a time in the late 2020s and early 2030s.. this is likely to start to wain by 2035 as the pressure of military buildup, hardening the economy for war demographics and the west rearming.
So china is on a timetable with a definite goal it must achieve.
Yes, China is on a timetable but don’t forget 2027, the 100th anniversary of the PLA. There’s also the question of what exactly Beijing wants to do in 2027 or 2049: is it conquer Taiwan or just make sure that the PLA is the strongest, most advanced military in the world and leverage that strength? I also believe that China wants to take Taiwan by economic strangulation using a blockade while keeping the US at arm’s length using that world-class military that Xi has built up. A hot war over Taiwan would not serve China’s economic interests.
All nations have short term geopolitical objectives but the Chinese really are a patient people who see the Opium Wars as yesterday whereas Westerners see the Opium Wars as lost in the mists of history. I remember in the run up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing a Canadian news outlet (I can’t remember which one) had a great quote from a Chinese woman, just an ordinary person visiting Beijing for the games. This woman was very proud of her country and said “We waited 100 years for this!” or something along those lines. I can’t imagine a Westerner saying that; one hundred years to a Westerner is different from one hundred years to a Chinese.
By 2049 Beijing aims to have a world-class military, what they intend to do with it is another matter. Time will tell.
“I wonder what the next generation of Chinese leadership will look like”.
I’m going to go with, Chinese, Little yellow people with Slanty eyes ! (only qoting Prince Philip !)
And I ain’t got a clue what the UK’s will look like.
I’m using a working assumption that we well be subsumed by the galactic empire of zod and will all be led by a five legged purple blob called zzzeepop the, 10,000th.
Or musk will transfer his mind into a super computer and take over by being omnipresent in our washing machines.
What’s a Washing Machine ?
Something my wife tellls me exists in the kitchen that I need to engage with and learn how to use
I would disagree with you there Jonathan.
UKE is at war with Russia.
I would ask UKE ships homeworker in UK to undertake interdiction work on Russian ships and those grey fleet ships sailing under international flags of convenience carrying Russian oil, and seize them.
You have to hit Russia in her pockets a d with prize money, the UKE would be quids in for a Squadron or three of T26/31 combos.
Then again, I’d ask UKE to base a flight of their F16s out of an RAF base, and give Russian aviation the good news.
And tell the Russians to foxtrot Oscar if they complained. Only good Russian is a dead Russia.
Homeported
We could solve 2 issues with one stone and give a 99 year lease with sovereign control over the Isle of Wight to Ukraine.. then let them play with all the Russian ships 🤣🤣
While at heart I would agree with you, as a sort of up yours defiance, doing such just makes us as bad as them.
And ships can sail up the Channel legally, including Russian and Chinese vessels.
Why? They didn’t stop our ships, they just whinged a bit. Let them whinge.
There were NO “little boats” until the lying traitors Farage, Gove and Johnson persuaded ½ wit morons to vote to leave the EU in June 2016.
Now, are you one of those ½ wit morons? In which case you might just want to STFU and crawl back into your hole.
I noticed on AIS that The Canadian also went thru it, not sure if it was at the same time or not.
I’m not sure the Chinese are particularly bothered, but still, good to reassure the public that ‘we’re standing up to China’, whilst doing little to stop the new embassy being built in London.
Could be why Lammy was moved sideways? He was trying to stop the FONOP and wasn’t saying much about the Embassy – neither was Red Angie.
It is interesting how the knives have come out for Starmer now that Angie has gone. Whilst he isn’t great things could be a lot worse if the Student Politics Class War mob that do make a big part of the very immature Labour Group get their way. If it did come to a vote of confidence then they would probably despatch Starmer.
You think the Tories were tribal and disunited that took 14 years to fall apart. This lot haven’t kept it together for a year before talk of palace coups starts.
Whilst I don’t like Mandleson one bit he was a necessary evil in building bridges with the Tangerine Toddler.
I’m unsure why the fact that Mandleson sent some very stupid emails over a decade is Starmer’s fault if it wasn’t disclosed to Starmer – which it wasn’t. Everyone has things that if they came out could be made to look bad if anyone was so minded.
Mandleson and Rayner have served their purpose. So, I suspect has Morgan the Sweeney. Starmer is not a career politician; he is a fair minded intelligent bloke and Arsenal fan. Sadly his naivety makes him vulnerable to the point of becoming something of a Jonah. Rachel Reeves is similarly very intelligent and fair minded but also a bit politically naive. She relied on others to clear the path for her benefits cuts abd was dropped right in it. Starmer should never have sacked Sue Gray, someone who combined political awareness, intelligence and decency. She would have looked after Starmer. Morgan McSweeney has to go. These ‘dark arts’ operators have had their day.
Probably true.
The sad fact is that everyone has weaknesses – I don’t Churchill would have survived today’s social media machine.
Starmer is a weak appeaser in the mould of Doris without the penchant for untruths.
It’s funny how politics has gone, when I did my politics A level decades ago, the idea of politics was the art of getting agreement and essentially growing prosperity by getting everyone working together.. the truely great political leader was always a bit of an appeaser.. look at Churchill, the bulldog of conservative politicians and the man who would draw a red line at any cost. He actually worked very well with the left and Labour, his view was always the moderate Labour movement and left was a respected part of British culture, he only ever drew the line at what he saw was the unyielding extreme, so the far left socialist movement and the far right movements..he would happy work with everyone else.
The reality is starmer is essentially a political leader out of his age, he would have been perfect in the age of consensus politics.. in the age of the rampant populist far left and far right willing to shout any lie and do anything to promote their cause he is out of his depth.
Your Churchill reference is spot on. He was what the nation needed at that time. When the war was won the country needed a labour govt to exploit the wartime solidarity and shared sense of sacrifice for rebuilding. Horses for courses. Starmer is too forgiving for his own good. A leader sometimes has sacrifice people who have served their purpose. If Mandleson is so smart he should know that those who live by the sword……
That is probably a far assessment.
I agree on the Mandelson issue, ambassadors are geopolitical appointees and there is very little “morality” in geopolitical decisions, you send the person who is most likely to get what we need and improve our Geopolitical position, Essentially that is it, even if they are a bit sketchy with some skeletons in the cupboard.
There is no way starmer could have known about the idiot emails mandelson wrote a decade ago and to be honest we are allowed to have dodgy friends and believe they are ok and have been done down. I have had many upstanding and brilliant clinicians defend people who were proper wrong sorts, because they believed they were better than they were ( the human brain is very good at ignoring new even overwhelming evidence if it has already formed an opinion). It would have been a different story if there was any evidence mandelson had participated or knew about that man’s evils, that would have made him totally unsuitable for any office of any kind…
We seem to be descended into a set of positions as a cultural, were by the polical group we don’t like can do no right at all and any slight mistakes they make are to be classed as catastrophic “get rid of them” errors and it’s it’s our own tribe they can do no wrong at all. Unfortunately that way leads to a completely dis functional democracy as for a democracy to function if the other side wins you have to give them the benefit of the doubt and if you are the winner you need to take the other sides views into consideration in decisions you make… personally from a UK perspective I blame how we managed Brexit, thats not a judgment on Brexit, just how we managed it as a nation..the winners decided they would do what the hell they wanted no matter what and the losers decided they were going to overturn the result no matter what .. when what should have happened was a adult debate on what Brexit meant for the majority of people and what they wanted out of it ( no matter which way they voted ).
Finally, I also worry about what comes after starmer..there are parts of the Labour Party that I think would be profoundly damaging to the UK ( I’m of the option that the starmer government is more struggling with an almost impossible position than actively damaging) …but I think the far left of the Labour Party and the far right ( far right Tory and reform ) are likely to be profoundly damaging to the very fabric of the UK ( simply because they will not give a shit what anyone other than their own core thinks).
Exactly the fear I and many others have.
Starmer ousted, the loony left come in. Great…..all we need. Always the problem with Labour.
Please no 😵💫
Well I warned of it when they came in, and was reassured that Starmer was going to be in full control.🙄
You can never tell when the fringes will pop up 😵💫😵💫
Amusing that Mandelson was hired for his links to those around Donald Trump and fired for links to Jeffery Epstein. Exactly the same reason?
To be honest I think the Chinese communist leadership will be quite happy with this action, it plays straight into the China as a victim story that is lapped up by the home crowd and is believed by the second and third world powers ( that are not next door to China and getting Chinese money and trade).
It’s a bit of a challenge to the UK really as we have the legal right to transit the strait and are supporting Taiwan… but they it China Taiwan situation is seen by a lot of the world as an internal Chinese affair.
If proof were needed, why the West must build robust naval global fleets, this is it. This could easily be a container ship sailing along an international trade route, but intercepted and either stalled or turned back. I estimate five years before this becomes commonplace.
Erm, say again ? not quite getting what you are getting at.
Halfwit, I preferred you when you were called Dorris!
Ha, I just got what you were saying, had to read it a fewc times but yes, I get you now.
Was “Dorris2 a previous name of mine ? not so sure !😂
wtf “Dorris” (I even checked it before posting) 😒
I agree that China will start their aggressive activities based on their fantasy nine dash line arguments just as Putin’s aggression is based around fantasy arguments that ignore treaties that Russia signed.
The worrying thing is China is buying up support so it might get a majority, via small countries, to legitimise and recognise this fantasy alternative reality. It is a real possibility.
General Assembly Votes cannot change sea boarders. Only countries can do it via mutual agreement. China can buy off every African dictatorship it likes, it won’t make any difference.
Yup, and the international tribunal said China’s claims were nonsense too. That didn’t make an iota of difference.
Nope, China will organise a vote of some kind to ‘legitimise’ this mess.
And then it will use its maritime power to enforce that.. because the nation that builds all the ships, owns most of the ports, owns a good portion of the shipping tonnage and has a really big navy can enforce any “ semi legitimate” thing it wants when it comes to the high seas and trade… that’s how the British empire worked after all 😂
The alliance of upheaval is how people describe China, Russia and North Korea, and it may be the beginning of a new period of political and military history. What form it takes is dependent on how the West reacts and how quickly it can adapt industry and governance to ensure future military programmes are conducted at a competitive rate. The Chinese are demonstrating a new dynamic in delivering products at a rate that is currently unmatched in the West. Their car industry is now capable of matching the best Europe can offer, but at cost and quality levels that are giving many Western manufacturers sleepless nights. If the same pace of development is prevalent in its military sector, then the global situation is dire. At the London DESI 2025, there was a larger technology presence than at previous shows, and that is a clear message to China that the West is cognizant of the urgency this segment must have in future developments.
I agree we are waking up far too late.
But as much as Jonathan talks of hardening the Chinese economy what happen when the West stops buying China’s huge volume of cars etc what then pays for China’s crazy housing bubble?
It certainly won’t be India and they don’t really trust China but are not going to dance to Trump’s tune.
None of this is a one way punt and the whole of NATO and AUS, JPN etc is economically much more powerful than China but has let China have a head start.
The problem is the west will not stop buying from China until China and the west are at war.. essentially that war will shut down all the civilian economies of the nations at war, because it will be a total war.. so its then about which nations will last longer under full wartime economic conditions, china has hardened for that.. essentially moving its whole economy to fighting a war.. the western economy does not have the same wartime button.
I actually think if the west went full Reagan doctrine on China now it would win, it would hurt like hell but the western economic model can win that economic war.. as long as it can keep its wider markets open.. in a world war essentially that all shuts down and I think China has the advantage then because of how it’s designed it’s economy.
I do think that as people are interesting in defence they are voting with their wallets
All you need to do is to put a Chinese flag by products on Amazon / Ebay and the other digital tat markets and nobody will touch it. It really is that simple. If you want to onshore then just mandate marking that up clearly.
Obvs the various tat merchants will try and get round this but it is the most subtle way of cutting this off.
I think the problem is the west is just not set up to fight economically against an essentially mercantile and maritime communist power.. essentially what China has become is a heady mix of nationalism, communism, mercantile state and maritime superpower.
Now we can say put a Chinese flag against everything made in China and I think that is a good idea. But 90% of the entire worlds shipped tonnage of goods and materials flow through Chinese. Almost 100% of all container goods are transport I’m containers made by china, 20-30% of the worlds good are transported by Chinese ships..
Chinese companies are entwining themselves in western companies. For instance a large Chinese retailer is on the verge of buying Argos.. at that point Argos is a CCP asset. Because every Chinese company has a shadow board of CCP members… so a western company owned by a Chinese company has a line of control to the CCP ..
The west would need to make a concerted effort to fight Chinese communist mercantilism.. leaving it to the market will fail.
Sadly, SB, the Chinese car onslaught is only beginning in Europe and there is clear evidence on British roads that it will take a juggernaut to attempt any government action to soften its impact. In the US, Trump is clearly aware of the automotive situation, but more importantly, Ford is changing its whole ethos around the Chinese threat, with Tesla leading the way. There are two faces to China, the proactive industrial exporter and the warrior, and sometime soon one of them has to give. Only then will our domestic markets get a chance to take a breather….for a week or two!
As I said above all that is needed is clear origin labelling.
As well as a nudge campaign about local jobs and anchoring. I think you would be surprised at how far that shifts the dial.
Tesla lost a lot of market share as a result of Elon’s lunacy with Trump. I own a Tesla Y and they do have a good market proposition due to their supercharger network which makes a huge amount of sense for corporates. But I wouldn’t buy a Tesla if Elon started sounding off again.
I would not buy a Tesla at all to be honest.. don’t like their lack of knobs. But you would not catch me dead in an MG Chinese mercantilism at its best.. I even spent an extra 15k to specifically avoid an MG ( also I would not put my kids in it Because I would not trust the battery quality control) ..
You used to have a Tesla S – I recall?
I think the issue with Chinese cars is more the quality of the software/engineering. The users are testers – much as with JLR.
Although with that hack the M&S hack and a few other there is a common factor …..TATA consulting!
You used to have a Tesla S – I recall?
I think the issue with Chinese cars is more the quality of the software/engineering. The users are testers – much as with JLR.
Although with that hack the M&S hack and a few other there is a common factor …..TATA consulting!
If you want to get Chinese cars out of the market publish the reliability stats again – they wouldn’t sell any MGs in the UK – everyone I know who had one said they were cheap but dreadful at higher mileages.
That old S had actual buttons and knobs.. you cannot get them in Europe anymore.. all the models you can are buttonless..when I changed cars I tried the new Tesla and the MG but I changed to an EV6 in the end.
Well done Richmond and Higgins
This is a bit of a hard one for the west because of what China is looking for.
You have to remember one of the interesting ideas around Chinese military doctrine has been hide your strength as well as the idea of not interfering in sovereign issues. This has mean China for a long time was not looking for allies and getting political consensus with lots of other nations… but that has changed as it’s developed its potential wartime doctrine for fighting the US, it recognised it needed allies or at least friendly neutrality across a lot of the globe to beat the west.. so it’s been developing it’s strategy around that. One of its core political warfare moves is the idea of China as a long term victim of the west ( and that’s part of its own internal discourse as well).. this actually goes down well with most third and second world countries.. who sort of feel the same way.
So China creates the dialogue that Taiwan is an internal Chinese issue ( which is easy because Taiwan always insisted it was the real Chinese government) and the West is interfering and bullying in an internal Chinese affair.. this plays well to the home, African and South American galleries. Britain and the US sending ships is seen as bullying and strengths the thought at home and abroad that China is in the right to deal with the Taiwan issue.
The catch 22 for the west is that if it does not show its strength and deter China, it knows China will invade Taiwan all the quicker.
So what to do.. personally I think if the west is really ready and happy to fight if needs be over Taiwan it needs to keep these deterrent actions going and double down harder to try and deter China for as long as possible. If it’s not then it needs to slowly back away.
I think maybe framing this in a different way may have been more geopolitically savy… simply have the ship visit a Korean port then just transit by the normal sea route to Japan no fuss about making a transit.. just say it’s going from A to B that’s it. This would take the wind out of Chinese sails a bit… but let China know the RN is there supporting its allies.
My word, talk about verbal diarrhea!
My word are you speaking or breaking 💨 it’s hard to tell 🫶👌
Infantile politics …. do we make such a fuss when Chinese warships pass through the English Channel?
Nope, but we are not waging a political war or geeing up our population for a fight. China is doing both. It’s worth remembering China does not play infantile politics, everything has a purpose.. in this case it’s to frame the UK and US as aggressors and play to a specific audience.
In regards to China, always ask why, then why again a few more times.
More fool them if go to war with the West. That very act will kill the cash cow that contributes massively to their strong economy.
Yep, all war is essentially foolishness unless you’re defending yourself. But china unfortunately sees it as defending itself due to its very specific and unyielding view of Taiwan.
And in the end they are run by a a ln ardent communist, who only sees the economy as a tool.
Hmmm…by the time CSG29 returns to the I-P, an Astute SSN should be based at HMAS Stirling, able to support I-P segment of deployment, all T-45s have PIP mod completed, NSM installed, SVE well underway, possibly commissioned/ deployable T-26/T-31(?), additional F-35Bs available for QE class, including integration of possible additional British munitions, and initial FSS approaching build completion. However, Xi has decreed that PLA be ready for war by 2027. Therefore, recommend discretion in planning SCS segment. Once SSN-A class is operational, especially if equipped with SLCM-N, RN should be able to cheerfully extend the middle finger salute to the ChiComs. If PLAN twitches, nuke them until the glow illuminates the western SCS.
The collective West just needs to grow a set and recognise Taiwan as the democratic country it is.
As well as prepare and have a very very solid plan for fighting china and show china that the west is ready for a very long and hard war.
If we do that we need to show exactly what stick we are willing to beat it with and exactly how much beating we are willing to take in return.
FONOPs are important to show international bullies that the civilised world is not taken in by their nonsense, and will not be intimidated by them.