However, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the US statement was “not true” and that the aircraft had been engaging in reconnaissance close to China’s island province of Hainan.
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Reuters added that the Pentagon reported the incident – likely to increase tensions in and around the contested waterway – as having taken place in global airspace on Tuesday as the us maritime patrol aircraft carried out “a routine usa patrol”. In 2001, a U.S. EP-3 collided with a Chinese J-8, killing the pilot and forcing the American plane to make an emergency landing in China.
China has always been irked by US reconnaissance missions off the Chinese island province of Hainan, which sits at the northern end of the South China Sea and is home to a number of highly sensitive naval and air installations.
China’s reclamation work in the region, which includes the building of airfields on some disputed islands, has prompted the US and its allies to express alarm over the maritime expansion, which they suspect is aimed at extending its military reach.
China claims nearly all of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of maritime trade passes each year.
“In accordance with laws and regulations, the two Chinese military aircraft followed and monitored the US plane from a safe distance without taking any unsafe actions”.
Murphy said that it is important that the US does not overreact to these types of occurrences, which have recently involved Chinese and Russian militaries.
“This is exactly the type of irresponsible and unsafe intercepts that the air-to-air annex to Cues is supposed to prevent”, said Mr Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank, using the acronym for the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, an agreement that governs air and naval encounters.
The Pentagon report estimated China has reclaimed 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land in the Spratly Islands, also claimed by the Philippines, over the past two years. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei have overlapping claims.
However, the incident bucked a trend of the previous year in which Chinese pilots have been much safer and less provocative in their encounters with the US military.
The latest interception, analysts said, underscored the growing risk of accidental clashes as the two countries’ militaries operate near each other to assert strategic and diplomatic goals.
“The problem isn’t, ‘Are you talking?’ The problem is this kind of behavior, this very unsafe and risky behavior in the air which puts people’s lives at risk unnecessarily”, he told reporters in Washington. “We need necessary means and capabilities to defend ourselves, but this has nothing to do with militarisation”, he said. “This action by the US side threatened China’s sovereignty and security interests, endangered the staff and facilities on the reef, and damaged regional peace and stability”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kanghesaid said in Beijing.
While China has returned the blame, calling American claims “untrue” and saying the plane was in its waters off the island province of Hainan.
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The encounter comes as tensions over the South China Sea are tight between the two world powers.
