When American warships have sailed through the Taiwan Strait in the past, China's response has mostly been predictable.

Beijing has accused the US of provocative behavior that threatens peace in the region and sends the wrong signal to "separatists" in Taiwan.

Now Beijing has apparently changed its language rules.

"It is a false claim when certain countries refer to the Taiwan Strait as 'international waters' to find an excuse to manipulate the Taiwan issue and threaten China's sovereignty and security," the foreign ministry spokesman said in Beijing on Monday.

The Taiwan Strait is subject to China's sovereignty as an Exclusive Economic Zone.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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The spokesman was responding to a report by the Bloomberg news agency.

It said the US government is concerned that Chinese military officials have repeatedly denied the status of the Taiwan Strait as international waters in talks in recent months.

This position is actually not new, but has rarely been raised as an issue in the past.

It is not to be expected that the American Navy will be dissuaded from further transits as a result.

The new language regulation could increase the risk of unwanted clashes because Beijing has put itself under pressure to react more decisively in the future.

Canada and Australia report incidents

Apparently, there is a change of strategy behind this: Last October, China had already asked the Canadian government through various channels to stop sending warships through the Taiwan Straits.

The countries involved, including France and Great Britain, justify the trips with the protection of freedom of navigation.

The missions serve to reject Beijing's internationally unrecognized territorial claims and its threatening gestures towards Taiwan.

China sees this as an attempt to prevent its rise to global power.

The danger of miscalculations has also increased in the airspace over the South China Sea.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke in Singapore over the weekend of an "alarming" increase in unsafe Chinese maneuvers when encountering ships and aircraft from other countries.

Among other things, Canada had announced that one of its reconnaissance aircraft had been harassed by Chinese warplanes in a "very worrying and unprofessional" manner.

According to Canadian information, the plane was part of an international mission to enforce UN sanctions against North Korea.

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry sharply rejected this.

"It is a fact that the Canadian military plane flew thousands of miles to harass China on its doorstep." The plane "repeatedly and continuously approached China's airspace."

Australia reported a similar incident.

A Chinese fighter plane maneuvered directly in front of an Australian reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea and released aluminum camouflage devices that got into the Australian engine.

In this case, too, China accused the Australian pilots of "approaching Chinese airspace".

When experts talk about the risk of unwanted clashes in the region, they point to a fatal incident in 2001, when a Chinese warplane collided with an American reconnaissance plane.

The Americans landed on the island of Hainan Not and were detained by the Chinese military for 11 days.

The Chinese pilot was killed.

He is still revered as a hero in China and is considered a role model for today's pilots.

It took a considerable amount of time before the Americans managed to get someone responsible on the Chinese side on the phone.

In order to avoid such miscommunications in the future, the country's top foreign policy chief, Yang Jiechi, met with US President Jake Sullivan's security adviser for more than four hours on Monday evening.

Main topic was North Korea.

Beijing then said that both sides agreed that it was necessary to “keep channels of conversation open”.