“Over the course of the previous year, the Department of Defense has seen improvements in the way that Chinese military pilots fly, consistent with the worldwide guidelines and consistent with the way that aircraft can be operated in a safe and professional manner”, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, when questioned about the incident on Tuesday.
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The Pentagon says two Chinese fighter jets flew within about 50 feet of a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane Tuesday in global airspace over the South China Sea.
In 2001, a collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a US surveillance plane in the South China Sea killed the Chinese pilot and led to the American crew being detained on Hainan.
A Wednesday report from The Associated Press said the J-11s came close enough to the Aries II to quickly dive 200 feet to avoid hitting the Chinese fighters.
Tensions between China and the United States are high in the disputed waterway, an important shipping route thought to be home to vast energy deposits, and which Beijing claims nearly in its entirety. The U.S.is not a claimant but has positioned itself as the champion of freedom of navigation in the area, which hosts more than $5 trillion of trade a year.
Both China and the United States have over the years been working to minimise the risk of confrontations.
The Pentagon statement said the Department of Defense was addressing the issue through military and diplomatic channels.
“The US allegations are untrue”, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
Greg Poling of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies said China could be expressing anger at USA movements there.
“It must be pointed out that U.S. military planes frequently carry out reconnaissance in Chinese coastal waters, seriously endangering Chinese maritime security”, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei Hong told reporters.
China’s defense ministry said the increased US activity proved its need for more “defensive facilities” in the islands. We demand that the U.S. immediately cease this type of close reconnaissance and prevent this sort of incident from happening again.
Chinese authorities monitored and issued warnings to the USA destroyer as it passed.
The US president Barack Obama travels to Asia from May 21 to 28.
China’s Defence Ministry said it deployed two fighter jets, one early warning aircraft and three ships to track the United States destroyer and warn it off.
CNN reports that Beijing also insisted its pilots “kept a safe distance throughout” the encounter, “without taking any unsafe actions”. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry denied that the sail-by by the USS William P. Lawrence was intended as a message for China, which has been extending the size of the some of the 14 islands, adding forces and building airport runways in the archipelago since 2013.
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“It is worth pointing out that the USA military planes frequently fly close to Chinese coastal areas for reconnaissance activities posing severe threat to China’s maritime air and security”, he said.
