This statement is missing context. Under One China policy (the status quo between the CPC and the KMT up until 2016), the Taiwan Strait was considered territorial waters with the median line used to delineate the divide. In the recent years leading up to 2016, neither party crossed this line.
In 2016, the DPP took power and declared that One China policy no longer holds, thus, that the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway.
Further missing context, in 2013 China started pumping sand in to make artificial islands to further exert it’s power over nearby waters and ramped up it’s naval harassment.
It is an international waterway so they are entitled to traverse it. Just like everyone else is.
This statement is missing context. Under One China policy (the status quo between the CPC and the KMT up until 2016), the Taiwan Strait was considered territorial waters with the median line used to delineate the divide. In the recent years leading up to 2016, neither party crossed this line.
In 2016, the DPP took power and declared that One China policy no longer holds, thus, that the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway.
Further missing context, in 2013 China started pumping sand in to make artificial islands to further exert it’s power over nearby waters and ramped up it’s naval harassment.
The PLAN frankly was not in any state to harass Taiwan prior to anytime before 2010 at the earliest, so it’s not surprising it wasn’t used as a coercion tool. Such a friendly peaceful neighbor was in the year leading up to 2016 instead practicing to invade Taiwan’s presidential office amongst other sites.