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The White House said on Monday recent dangerous encounters between U.S. and Chinese forces in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea reflect a growing aggressiveness by Beijing’s military that raises the risk of an error in which “somebody gets hurt.”
Washington’s sharply worded warning followed the U.S. Navy’s release on Sunday of a video of what it called an “unsafe interaction” in the Taiwan Strait in which a Chinese warship crossed in front of a U.S. destroyer in the sensitive waterway.
The incident comes as both countries trade blame for not holding military talks – with disagreements between the rivals over everything from trade and Taiwan to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and could raise the potential for future confrontations.
It also follows a May 26 incident in which a Chinese fighter jet carried out what the United States called an “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver near an American military plane over the South China Sea in international airspace.
“Sadly, this is just part of, again, a growing aggressiveness by the PRC (People’s Republic of China) that we’re dealing with, and we’re prepared to address it,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters amid deteriorating ties between Washington and Beijing.
