China Accuses US of Provocation After Near Collision of Warships

By Staff, Agencies

China’s defense minister on Sunday accused the United States and its allies of trying to destabilize the Indo-Pacific – just hours after warships from the two countries were involved in a near collision.

In a speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, Li Shangfu accused the US of “provoking bloc confrontation for self-interest” and said Washington and its allies were making up rules to assert dominance over the region.

He also warned that any “severe confrontation” between the US and China would be “an unbearable disaster for the world.”

Li’s warning came a day after US War Secretary Lloyd Austin told the same forum that a war over Taiwan would be “devastating” and affect the global economy “in ways we cannot imagine.”

And it came just hours after the US accused a Chinese warship of cutting in front of an American vessel that was taking part in a joint exercise with the Canadian navy in the Taiwan Strait, forcing the American vessel to slow down to avoid a collision.

The incident was captured on video by a crew from Canada’s Global News, which was aboard the frigate HMCS Montreal traveling with the Chung-Hoon.

Montreal’s commander, Capt. Paul Mountford, called the action of the Chinese ship “not professional,” while a senior US military official said, “Actions speak louder than words, and the dangerous behavior we’ve seen from the PLA around the strait, in the South and East China Seas, and beyond really says it all.”

In a statement later Sunday, a spokesperson for the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command said Chinese forces “handled the situation based on laws and regulations.”

“Relevant countries are deliberately stirring up trouble and risks in the Taiwan Strait, maliciously undermining regional peace and stability and sending wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” PLA Senior Colonel Shi Yi said.

The incident is the second time in two weeks that Chinese military personnel have engaged in aggressive maneuvers in the vicinity of US military personnel near China’s border. A Chinese fighter jet conducted an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea last week, the US military said in a statement released on Tuesday.