The Navy said a Chinese warship came within 150 yards of a U.S. destroyer in the Taiwan Strait in “an unsafe manner,” as China blamed the United States for “deliberately provoking risk” in the region.
U.S. and Canadian warships were conducting a joint exercise in the strait, which separates the island of Taiwan and China, when the Chinese ship cut in front of the guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon, forcing it to slow down to avoid a collision, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement on Saturday.
China’s military rebuked the United States and Canada for “deliberately provoking risk” after the countries’ navies staged a rare joint sailing through the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said the Chung-Hoon and Canada’s frigate HMCS Montreal conducted a routine transit of the strait on Saturday.
The maritime encounter was the latest close call between the Chinese and U.S. military. On May 26, a Chinese fighter jet carried out an “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver near a U.S. military plane over the South China Sea in international airspace.
The People’s Republic of China has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its territory since the defeated Republic of China government fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists.
President Biden has said the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
