Taiwan on Saturday dismissed as “ridiculous” a Chinese directive requiring ships to obey Beijing’s traffic control instructions while transiting the Taiwan Strait ahead of Typhoon Dolphin, rejecting what Taipei called an attempt to assert authority over waters it considers international rather than Chinese territory. The dispute surfaced even as the storm itself pounded Japan’s Okinawa prefecture with sustained winds of 162 kph, injuring five people and cutting power to roughly 14,000 buildings, while ports, ferries and flights across Japan, China and Taiwan shut down ahead of the typhoon’s expected landfall on China’s east coast late Sunday or early Monday.
Chinese state media said Wednesday that, because of the approaching storm, ships heading north through the strait’s southern entrance would need to follow traffic control measures starting Thursday night, sheltering in designated safe waters and complying with instructions from on-site maritime authorities.
Taiwan’s government called the move an overreach with no legal basis, saying Beijing has no right to restrict access to a waterway through which billions of dollars in trade pass annually. China claims sovereignty over the strait as part of its broader position that democratically governed Taiwan belongs to its territory, a claim both Taipei and Washington reject. China’s military transits the strait on a near-daily basis independent of the current storm.
The typhoon itself was tracking roughly 160 kilometers northwest of Kume Island in Okinawa as of 0300 GMT Saturday, moving northwest at 15 kph with maximum sustained winds of 162 kph and gusts up to 216 kph, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Five elderly residents suffered non-life-threatening injuries in Okinawa, three of them after being knocked down by the wind, prefectural officials said. Domestic carriers ANA and Japan Airlines canceled flights to the region, and Amami island in neighboring Kagoshima prefecture was also expected to face significant impact as the storm continues northwest.
U.S. military installations across Okinawa, including Kadena Air Base and Camp Foster, moved to their highest storm-alert level Thursday, sandbagging entrances and relocating aircraft ahead of what officials described as an unusually broad wind field with a heightened flooding risk in low-lying areas. Dolphin marked the fourth significant tropical system to threaten the island since Okinawa’s typhoon season began in June, following storms Jangmi, Mekkhala and Bavi, a pace that has kept island-wide emergency management crews on repeated alert throughout the summer.
China’s National Meteorological Centre forecast landfall between Zhoushan in Zhejiang province and Fuding in Fujian province, with winds near the center of 38 to 45 meters per second, or roughly 85 to 101 mph. Rain and strong winds were expected to affect eastern China, including Shanghai and its surrounding provinces, through August 12, with parts of eastern Zhejiang forecast to receive more than 600 millimeters of rain. Zhejiang raised its coastal typhoon alert to its highest level, halted port operations and suspended 162 passenger ferry routes.
Ningbo Lishe International Airport said it would stop operations from 11:30 p.m. Saturday and cancel all Sunday flights, while Shanghai’s Yangshan port had already been cleared of vessels by late Friday and some Yangtze River Delta rail services were set to be suspended beginning Sunday.
Taiwan reported 63 international flight cancellations tied to the storm, with heavy rain expected across the island’s northern regions over the weekend, though authorities had not ordered evacuations as of Saturday. The typhoon’s track keeps it largely north of Taiwan itself, limiting direct storm impact on the island even as the shipping dispute with Beijing plays out alongside it.
The confrontation over strait access adds a political dimension to what would otherwise be a routine storm-preparedness story for the region. China’s directive did not specify penalties for noncompliance, and there was no immediate indication Saturday of vessels being intercepted or turned back under the new instructions. The dispute follows a pattern of recurring friction over the strait’s legal status, distinct from China’s separate and more frequent practice of sending military aircraft and vessels across the strait’s unofficial median line, activity Taiwan’s defense ministry tracks and reports on almost daily and has cited in recent budget requests to justify record levels of defense spending.
Officials in Taipei framed their objection Saturday primarily as a rejection of the underlying sovereignty claim rather than a response to any specific incident at sea, a distinction the government has drawn consistently when Beijing has invoked storms, drills or other pretexts to assert operational control over the waterway in the past.
