BEIJING
- 25th of August 2014, China's state-run media warned Washington that Beijing
could threat its surveillance flights as an "act of hostility", after
accusing a Chinese fighter jet flew severely close to a US military aircraft.
US Rear Admiral John Kirby said Friday the armed Chinese warplane came close to
the American P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft on three occasions, at times
less than 30 feet (nine meters) away, in what he called a "very
dangerous" intercept.
China's defense ministry spokesman Yang Yujun called the allegations
"totally groundless" in a statement cited by the official news agency
Xinhua.
The incident took place 220 kilometers (135 miles) off China's Hainan island,
over an area the US insists is international waters but Beijing regards as part
of its territory.
The incident has echoes of a major incident in April 2001, when a Chinese
fighter jet collided with a US Navy EP-3 spy plane around 110 kilometers off
Hainan.
"Such reconnaissance is posing a threat to China's core security
interests, which could be treated as an act of hostility," said by the
Global Times which is owned by the Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's
Daily, and often takes a nationalist tone.
"It would be a life and death fight between China and the US if the
collisions in the South China Sea
The official China Daily newspaper accused the US of undermining mutual trust,
saying that Washington's concerns over China's rise were a "psychological
need to create an enemy to make up for its sense of loss after the end of the
Cold War".
Washington and Beijing have long disagreed over aviation and maritime rights in
the strategic South China Sea, the site of key shipping routes, which Beijing
claims almost in its entirety.
