7th Fleet Commander Praises Australia-Canada Warships Crossing Taiwan Strait and Call for Countering Communist China

U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Karl Thomas said on October 13th that failure to counter irresponsible actions and claims by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will only give Beijing an inch of leeway.

On the 247th anniversary of the U.S. Navy, Commander Thomas of the U.S. 7th Fleet praised Australia and Canada for joining regular U.S. patrols of the Taiwan Strait and commented on the challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region at an event at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C. think tank, Oct. 13.

Commenting on the increasingly aggressive behavior of the CCP in recent years, Thomas said that Beijing’s island-building in the South China Sea is a clear violation of Xi Jinping’s pledge to President Barack Obama not to pursue militarization in the South China Sea.

Thomas noted that the international community should stand up and take action against the growing provocations of communist China. He said that if the international community does nothing about the actions of communist China, it will surely lead to more aggressive actions by the dictatorship.

Thomas also mentioned that to demonstrate the commitment of the United States and its allies to a free and open Indo-Pacific region, the USS Higgins, a Burke-class missile destroyer, and HMCS Vancouver, a Halifax-class patrol ship of the Canadian Navy, jointly passed through the Taiwan Strait on September 20th, Taipei time.