Will the Royal Navy transit the Taiwan Strait?
Considering the implications of the Carrier Strike Group sailing through the strait
The Thinker | No. 05/2025
The journey of the Royal Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 2025 (CSG2025) – named Operation HIGHMAST – to the Indo-Pacific this year has long been known; late last month it set sail from the United Kingdom (UK). Yet, the route Operation HIGHMAST will take, once in the region, remains unconfirmed. Commodore James Blackmore, who is commanding the deployment, has said: ‘I will deliver whatever mission I am ordered to go and do…’
Following this remark, The Telegraph ran the following headline: ‘Royal Navy ready to defy China in the Taiwan Strait’. This begs the question: is it?
Professor Michael Clarke has placed bets that it is not. He has wagered a tenner that ‘some element of the task group will go through the South China Sea…but none of them will go through the Taiwan Strait’. Presumably, he thinks the current government is too frightened of upsetting Beijing.
There is some merit to this thinking. Upon taking power, the Labour government has, quietly, attempted to reset relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). First and foremost, this has meant more engagement. Since last summer, there has been a series of ministerial visits to the PRC, as well as a recent trip by Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff. In this era, contentious issues will be raised privately while posturing in public will be kept to a minimum – and sailing a frigate through the Taiwan Strait would be a very public act.
Then again, there are several reasons to think that the Royal Navy will indeed transit the strait.
First, Britain is committed to upholding international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). Last year, Catherine West, Minister for the Indo-Pacific, reaffirmed this commitment and proposed to protest any action which threatened the primacy of the convention. In March, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, even donned a red life jacket while in the South China Sea to underscore this point.
In line with UNCLOS, there exists a corridor of water running through the strait where freedom of navigation rights apply. In 2023, Grant Shapps, former Defence Secretary, clarified that ‘Freedom of navigation does cover the straits of Taiwan’. Yet, Beijing appears to deny this when it – as it frequently does – protests foreign military vessels transiting the strait. In fact, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – the PRC’s armed forces – also engages in reckless activities aimed at deterring other navies from taking this course. Last summer, the Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands complained about the ‘potentially unsafe’ situation created when two Chinese fighter jets tracked its frigate, HNLMS Tromp, as it transited the strait.
Beijing is also attempting to legitimise its control over the Taiwan Strait with its coast guard. In April 2023, a three-day patrol, including ‘on-site inspections’ in the central and northern parts of the strait, were announced. No boardings were recorded, but similar patrols, which involved crossings over the strait median line, have occurred. So-called ‘law enforcement patrols’ to inspect, intercept and detain ‘unwarranted vessels’ were also announced as part of the PRC’s ‘Strait Thunder-2025A’ exercises. It has been alleged that during these drills, eight Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) ships operated on the Taiwan side of the median line, with one of these vessels entering Taiwan’s 24 nautical mile contiguous zone.
If the Royal Navy transits, it will do so not simply because it can, but because Beijing's undermining of international maritime law gives it a reason to. The PRC’s increasingly bellicose actions towards Taiwan provide another…
Over the past few years, the PLA has launched large-scale military drills around Taiwan. In doing so, Beijing has sought both to intimidate Taiwan and its partners as well as practise blockading the island. Already, the new leadership in His Majesty’s (HM) Government – as adverse as it may be to megaphone diplomacy – has called out the PRC for its military escapades. Following April’s ‘Strait Thunder’ drills, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) expressed its concern and reiterated that: ‘[HM Government] consider[s] the Taiwan issue one to be settled peacefully by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait through constructive dialogue, without the threat or use of force or coercion.’
A transit through the Taiwan Strait would reinforce the commitment of the UK to peace and stability across the strait. As Luke Pollard, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence, has stated, one reason for the CSG’s deployment is to make clear that ‘difficulties’, including those between Taiwan and the PRC, ‘are best resolved diplomatically’.
Failure to transit would undermine Britain’s commitment to the future of this waterway; one which HM Government prioritised only two years ago in the Integrated Review Refresh (IRR), and which one fifth of global maritime trade travels through. It would also undermine deterrence – how credible is the threat of economic sanctions in the event of a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan if the Royal Navy dare not sail through the strait?
Finally, a transit would not be a novelty, even though the media tends to treat it as an unexpectedly daring feat. British warships have done this before – most recently HMS Richmond during the CSG deployment of 2021. Since then, in addition to many American transits, an array of other countries has followed suit. A few months after the aforementioned Dutch transit, for example, two German navy vessels travelled through the waters. In February 2025, the Royal Canadian Navy transited the strait.
In fact, it seems that HM Government is keen on these multilateral efforts, perhaps even encouraging them. At the very least, before leaving his post as then de facto ambassador to Taiwan, John Dennis called for countries with the capacity to do so to sustain efforts to demonstrate freedom of navigation rights in the strait. On the Royal Navy and its record of transiting, Dennis told Nikkei Asia: ‘There is no doubt these operations will continue.’
So, it would seem that there is little need to speculate. Given this comment, Beijing’s actions and the response of Britain’s allies, the question is surely: why would the Royal Navy not transit the Taiwan Strait?
Assuming that later this year, a British warship does transit, what should the message of HM Government be? After all, as they did in 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its mouthpieces are bound to brand the move ‘meaningless’ and/or ‘a provocation’. A boilerplate statement reaffirming the Royal Navy’s compliance with international law is to be expected in reply. Yet, do the times we live in not call for more? Beijing’s behaviour has worsened over the past four years but, despite their increasing aggression, they continue to win global support for their position towards Taiwan.
When Lammy went to the South China Sea, his remarks were fulsome and clear. Here the Foreign Secretary did not pussyfoot about. He identified the problem as ‘dangerous and destabilising activities by China’. He explained the importance of the trade routes running through these waters for the UK’s prosperity, and he linked HM Government’s response to efforts to ‘maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific’. The same should be done for the Taiwan Strait.
Gray Sergeant is the Research Fellow in the Indo-Pacific at the Council on Geostrategy.
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