The US Indo-Pacific Command said the “unsafe” maneuver, which took place on Saturday, brought the Chinese vessel within 150 yards of US and Canadian ships during a routine patrol. exercise of freedom of navigation. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday that Beijing “firmly opposes relevant countries creating trouble” in the Taiwan Strait and that the United States was the first to provoke trouble.
China claims Taiwan, a self-governing democracy with 23 million people, as its own territory and maintains the Taiwan Strait as part of its economic zone. The United States says the strait is part of international waters, saying its exercise with HMCS Montreal “demonstrates the joint US-Canadian commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” “
The near miss in the Taiwan Strait came two weeks after what US officials called an “unnecessarily aggressive” encounter between Chinese and American military aircraft in the South China Sea. A Chinese fighter jet flew just a few dozen feet in front of an Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane, forcing the US plane into turbulence.
The clashes have plagued recent efforts to ease a diplomatic standoff between the United States and China after the US military shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon in February. Beijing has suggested a willingness to move past the incident, and President Biden spoke of a potential “thaw” in US-China relations last month.
Over the weekend, US and Chinese defense officials publicly accused each other of stoking tensions in the Taiwan Strait in separate incidents after Beijing rejected a US request to meet privately.
On Saturday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would not accept “coercion and bullying” of China’s allies and partners and warned the Chinese military against “unprofessional” intercepts of planes over the South China Sea.
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on Sunday accused “some countries” of “needlessly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries” and establishing “exclusive military alliances”. in Asia-Pacific.
On Sunday, before the video was released, Li suggested that the United States and its allies were intent on provoking China. “Why is it that all the friction between military aircraft and warships you mentioned happened near China’s air territory and waters?” he asked. “What are you doing wandering around other people’s houses?”
“In our language, we say: Mind your own people, mind your own ships and mind your own airplane.”
Vic Chiang contributed to this report.
