2023-06-04 06:03:27
The US Navy has accused a Chinese ship of making “dangerous” moves around a US destroyer in the Taiwan Strait, less than 10 days following an air accident between the two countries occurred in the region.
The US command said in a statement that the Chinese ship “carried out dangerous maneuvers near the Chong Hun,” the US destroyer that was sailing in the strait on Saturday.
The statement added that the Chinese ship “passed Chong Hoon from the left side and then intercepted it 150 meters away,” explaining that the destroyer “followed its course and slowed down to a speed of ten knots to avoid a collision.”
He added that the Chinese ship “passed once more in front of the front of Chong Hoon from the right side to the left side at a distance of two thousand meters” and continued sailing alongside the American destroyer, which approached it to a distance of less than 150 meters from it.
The incident occurred when the USS Chung Hun, an Aegis-class destroyer of the US Pacific Fleet, was sailing alongside the Canadian ship HMCS Montreal in the 180-kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait that separates the island. About mainland China.
For his part, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu defended the sailing of a warship through the path of an American destroyer and a Canadian frigate in the Taiwan Strait, and told a gathering of some of the world’s top defense officials in Singapore on Sunday that such patrols were allegedly “freedom of navigation”. It is a provocation to China.
In his first international public speech since becoming defense minister in March, Li told the Shangri-La Dialogue that China had no problems with free passage but that “we must prevent attempts to use those freedoms of navigation (patrols) – that Free passage – to exercise hegemony over navigation.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at the same forum on Saturday that Washington will not “falter in the face of bullying or coercion” by China, and will continue to sail and fly over the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to confirm that they are international waters, in the face of Beijing’s territorial claims to impose sovereignty. .
In addition, the United States said that a Chinese J-16 fighter late last month performed an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” while intercepting a US Air Force reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea, flying directly in front of the plane’s nose.
Those and previous incidents have raised fears of a potential incident that might lead to an escalation between the two countries at a time when tensions are already running high.
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