TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Germany is sending a warship on a transit through the South China Sea for the first time since 2002, in a win for the China hawks in Angela Merkel’s government.

The frigate is expected to stick to common trade routes and will neither pass through the Taiwan Strait nor within 12 nautical miles of the various natural features in the sea that China has claimed and built upon, according to CNN.

“That Germany [would] send this frigate under Merkel’s watch is a small miracle and a big achievement for defence minister Kramp-Karrenbauer, who very much pushed for this,” Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, told the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Germany joins a rapidly expanding roster of nations dispatching their navies to the South China Sea. The U.S., which regularly conducts freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in contested waters, has been leading the efforts, alongside countries such as France, the U.K., Australia, and soon India too.

China claims almost the entire 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea as its own, despite a 2016 ruling by the International Court of Justice in the Hague to the contrary.

The German frigate has requested permission to make a port call in Shanghai from the Chinese authorities, a move Benner told the SCMP was meant to appease Merkel and SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mutzenich of the opposition. The two politicians had both reportedly been fearful of angering China, which is Germany’s largest trading partner.

There is a risk Germany could draw China’s ire as the U.K. did last week, when it sent its largest warship through the contested waters, leading Hu Xijin (胡錫進), editor-in-chief of China’s state-run Global Times, to deride the U.K. as a “bitch” who was “asking for a beating.”

Yet Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, told the Global Times on Aug. 2 that “Unlike the UK … Germany is acting more on behalf of Europe to seek a long-term maritime order and maintain a certain contact with China, but not confrontationally.” Wang added that the port call would enhance communication, transparency, and mutual trust between China and Germany and that the frigate would be welcomed.

Somewhat contradictorily, Wang also said China may still hold back on giving the go-ahead for the port call, as it would still need to figure out Germany’s true motivations.

However, according to Benner, were Beijing to refuse the Shanghai port call, it would be “the best possible outcome,” as it would provide Kramp-Karrenbauer and others in the German government the chance to “express concerns over Beijing’s hegemonic aspirations in the region and its disregard for international law,” per the SCMP.