US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) Thursday mentioned in a statement that on December 21, a Chinese language Navy plane got here inside 20 toes of a US Air Pressure RC-135 surveillance airplane conducting routine operations within the South China Sea, forcing the RC-135 to take evasive maneuvers to keep away from a collision.
USINDOPACOM referred to as the occasion an “unsafe maneuver” by the Chinese language plane, attaching video evidence of the incident. It additional added:
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Joint Pressure is devoted to a free and open Indo-Pacific area and can proceed to fly, sail and function at sea and in worldwide airspace with due regard for the protection of all vessels and plane underneath worldwide regulation. We count on all international locations within the Indo-Pacific area to make use of worldwide airspace safely and in accordance with worldwide regulation.
The South China Sea is of nice financial and strategic significance to international locations bordering it. Commerce price $3.37 trillion passes by way of it. It’s wealthy in oil and pure gasoline reserves, in addition to being an essential fishing floor for regional fisheries.
The area is topic to quite a few sovereignty claims by China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China has the biggest sovereignty declare out of all international locations occasion to the dispute. Its claims are outlined by the nine-dash line primarily based on the 1958 “Declaration of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on China’s Territorial Sea.”
The US and its allies routinely conduct surveillance and freedom-of-navigation operations within the South China Sea to check Chinese language territorial claims. This has grow to be some extent of competition in US-China relations.
In Might, the Australian Division of Defence reported {that a} Chinese language fighter jet had intercepted an Australian Air Pressure P-8 plane conducting routine maritime surveillance operations in a “harmful maneuver” which posed a “security menace to the P-8 plane and its crew.”
In January, the Chinese language army mentioned it tracked and issued a warning to a US warship, the usBenfold which entered its disputed territorial waters.
