The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the “unsafe” maneuver, which took place Saturday, brought the Chinese vessel within 150 yards of the U.S. and Canadian ships during a routine freedom-of-navigation exercise. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday that Beijing “firmly opposed relevant countries creating trouble” in the Taiwan Strait and that the United States had provoked trouble first.
China claims Taiwan, a self-governing democracy of 23 million people, as its own territory and maintains the Taiwan Strait is part of its economic zone. The United States said the strait is part of international waters, saying its exercise with HMCS Montreal “demonstrates the combined U.S.-Canadian commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the incident in the Taiwan Strait was part of “a growing aggressiveness” by China that “we’re that we’re dealing with, and we’re prepared to address it.”
The near miss came two weeks after what U.S. officials called an “unnecessarily aggressive” encounter between Chinese and American military aircraft over the South China Sea. A Chinese fighter jet flew just several dozen feet in front of an Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane, forcing the U.S. plane into turbulence.
“We’re going to continue to keep the lines open with the Chinese to make it clear how unacceptable those particular intercepts are,” Kirby said. “We’re operating in international airspace and international waters. And both of those incidents were in complete compliance with international law.”
“It won’t be long before somebody gets hurt,” Kirby added. “That’s the concern with these unsafe and unprofessional intercepts. They can lead to misunderstandings. They can lead to miscalculations.”
Kirby said President Biden “will have another conversation with President Xi, and we’ll do that at the appropriate time. And I’m sure that when he does, he’ll be just as candid with President Xi then as he has been in the past.”
The encounters dealt a blow to recent efforts in easing the diplomatic standoff between the United States and China after the U.S. military shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon in February. Beijing has hinted at a willingness to move past the incident, and President Biden spoke of a potential “thaw” in U.S.-China relations last month.
Over the weekend, U.S. and Chinese defense officials publicly accused each other of stoking tensions in the Taiwan Strait at separate events after Beijing rejected a U.S. request to meet privately.
On Saturday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would not accept “coercion and bullying” of allies and partners by China and cautioned the Chinese military against “unprofessional” intercepts by warplanes above the South China Sea.
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on Sunday accused “some countries” of “wantonly meddling in other countries’ internal affairs” and building up “exclusive military alliances” in the Asia-Pacific.
On Sunday, before the video was released, Li suggested that the United States and its allies were intent on provoking China. “Why does all the friction between military aircraft and warships that you mentioned happen near China’s territorial airspace and waters?” he asked. “What are you doing hanging around other people’s houses?”
“In our language, we’d say: Mind your own people, mind your own ships and mind your own aircraft.”
Vic Chiang contributed to this report.
