Japan patrols Taiwan Strait for first time amid rising tensions with China

Japan has for the first time ever sent a Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel through the Taiwan Strait, local media reported on Thursday, in an apparent challenge to China's growing military assertiveness in the region.

The destroyer Sazanami, along with Australian and New Zealand vessels, conducted the transit on Wednesday in the narrow waterway between China and Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own territory, according to sources as quoted by Japanese media outlet Kyodo News.

The ships were believed to be heading to the South China Sea for exercises.

The transit, which came only a few days before Fumio Kishida steps down as Prime Minister, comes as China has ramped up military pressure in the waters and airspace around Japan.

China has been increasing its military activities around Japan, with a spy plane violating Japanese airspace near islands in Nagasaki Prefecture in late August.

Earlier this month, a Chinese aircraft carrier entered the contiguous zone just outside Japan's territorial waters for the first time when it sailed between remote islands in southern Japan from the East China Sea.

The US regularly sends warships through the Taiwan Strait to assert freedom of navigation, while allies including Britain and Australia have also made such transits in recent years, drawing China's ire.

This move came just days after a Chinese military spy plane entered Japanese airspace for the first time. Japan called the Chinese move "utterly unacceptable" and said it considered the flight a threat to the country's safety.

In July, the MSDF destroyer Suzutsuki sailed into Chinese territorial waters, media reports said, angering Beijing.

The Defence Ministry in Tokyo has not formally acknowledged that incident, but Defence Chief Minoru Kihara said on Tuesday that the ship’s captain had been removed the same month it occurred.

Taiwan is viewed as a potential military flashpoint in US-China relations, with Beijing regarding the island as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since they split in 1949 as the result of a civil war.