Last Saturday, an incident between two ships led to a new tension between China and the United States. In the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese ship maneuvered dangerously close to a US destroyer.

The Chinese ship “performed dangerous maneuvers near the Chung-Hoon,” a US destroyer, on Saturday, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.

The Peking ship “overtook Chung-Hoon to port and crossed her bow at 150 yards (137 meters). Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 (knots) to avoid collision,” Washington said in the statement. .

The incident occurred when the Chung-Hoon was passing through the Taiwan Strait with a Canadian warship on a joint mission through the sensitive seaway separating Taiwan, a self-governing island, from China.

The Chinese military said it had been monitoring the pass, but did not report any close encounters.

It is the second accident between Chinese and US military jets in less than 10 days, after Washington last week deemed it an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” by a Beijing fighter jet against one of its reconnaissance planes.

However, on Sunday, the two countries’ defense chiefs accused each other of tensions between the superpowers at a security forum held in Singapore, although there was no direct dialogue between the two.

The Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier annual security forum, ended today without US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who attended the conference, to attend a dialogue, as was happened between representatives of both parties in previous editions.

Beijing had rejected Washington’s request to meet the two in Singapore on Monday, blaming the US for imposing sanctions on Li in 2018 after accusing him of buying weapons from Russia’s state-owned Rosoboronexport.

In his speech today, Li assured his country is “open” to communication with the US, but stressed that “if there is no mutual respect, the dialogue is not productive,” a day after Austin urged his Chinese counterpart to launch a engage in dialogue with “avoiding miscalculations that lead to conflict.”

Asked about the incident, Li denounced today that “these are not innocent crossings, but provocations,” and reiterated China’s position on Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing has regarded as a rebel province since Kuomintang nationalists settled there in 1949. retreated. lose the civil war.

Combining the strong tone with reaffirmation that China is committed to “peaceful” reunification, the minister stressed that his country “does not pledge to relinquish power” to take Taiwan if provocations occur, and reiterated that “it it is up to China to decide how to resolve the matter.

The US Secretary of Defense, who arms the island and would in principle defend it in the event of an attack, said on Saturday that his country “will continue to categorically oppose a change in the status quo (of Taiwan) by a of both parties.

“We do not seek conflict or confrontation, but we will not hesitate in the face of coercion or abuse,” he added, echoing Li.