TAIPEI: U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, almost a week after China held massive war games around Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

The destroyer USS Higgins and the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver made a “routine” transit of the Taiwan Strait meant to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation for all countries, read a statement Monday by the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet.

The U.S. Navy, occasionally joined by ships from allied countries, regularly transits the sensitive waterway separating China from Taiwan.

China condemned the manoeuvre, saying it undermined peace and stability in the region.

The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command said it mobilised naval and air forces to monitor the transit of the U.S. and Canadian ships “in accordance with the law.”

The transiting ships navigated “through waters where high-seas freedom of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law,” read the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet statement.

“The international community’s navigational rights and freedoms in the Taiwan Strait should not be limited,” it added.

The transit came less than a week after China conducted large-scale military exercises surrounding Taiwan and its outlying islands last Monday, simulating the sealing off of key ports in a move that underscores the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony before being unified with China at the end of World War II. It split away in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island as Mao Zedong’s Communists defeated them in a civil war and took power.

The U.S. is Taiwan’s biggest unofficial ally and is bound by its own laws to provide the island with the means to defend itself.