The US Navy sails near a Chinese militarized island in the South China Sea

(CNN) – The US Navy has sent a destroyer near a disputed island in the South China Sea that Beijing has fortified with military facilities to claim its territorial rights in the area.

Mobility occurred when The Chinese army entered the third day of a show of force around Taiwan.1,600 kilometers near the northern entrance to the South China Sea, in response to a short visit by the Taiwanese president to the United States.

In a statement, the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said the guided missile destroyer USS Milius passed within 12 nautical miles, the internationally recognized limit of the country’s territorial waters, of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, otherwise known as the Nansha Islands in China.

Mischief Reef is in the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, and is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. But Beijing asserted its claims to the island by building it and putting military infrastructure on it.

The United States maintains that such actions violate the Law of the Sea Convention.

“Places such as Mischief Reef that are submerged at high tide in their natural state have no right to a territorial sea. Land reclamation efforts, facilities and facilities constructed in the area of ​​Mischief Reef do not alter this designation under international law,” the US Seventh Fleet said in the statement.

China claims most of the vast South China Sea as part of its territorial waters, including many islands and outlying bays in the disputed body of water, many of which Beijing has militarized, such as Mischief Reef.

The guided missile destroyer USS Milius conducts a freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea on Friday. (Credit: MC1 Greg Johnson/US Navy)

A spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command said the US destroyer “illegally infiltrated” into Chinese waters near Meishef Reef, which Beijing calls Meiji Reef.

“China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters,” Colonel Tian Junli, the Air Force’s chief officer, said in a statement.

The Seventh Fleet statement said that the so-called freedom of navigation operation on the US destroyer defended the rights of ships of any country to operate in the region.

US warships regularly conduct this type of FONOP in the South China Sea and it was on Monday The second in three weeks from Miliuswhich sailed on March 23 near the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, in the northern part of the South China Sea.

“The United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, no matter the location of excessive maritime claims and no matter what current events,” the Seventh Fleet said in a statement on Monday.

After FONOP in March, Beijing alleged that the United States had violated its sovereignty while “undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” said Tan Kefei, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Defense.

Monday’s US FONOP program came as Chinese forces entered their third day of large-scale military exercises around the island of Taiwan, an autonomous democracy north of the South China Sea, which China’s ruling Communist Party nonetheless claims as its territory. He never ruled.

Beijing began operations across Taiwan on Saturday, a day after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States, where she met with the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy.

Beijing has repeatedly warned of Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy, previously threatening to take “firm and decisive measures” if it happened.

CNN’s Beijing bureau contributed to this report.