No incident occurred but the US military called the Chinese pilot’s maneuvers “hazardous”.
However, China’s Defense Ministry negated such statements saying, “The US is deliberately speculating again on the question of reconnaissance flights by American military aircraft near China,” the Ministry of Defense reported to Chinese newspaper Huantsu Shibao.
The ministry further said that the Chinese military pilots always act on the basis of laws and regulations and are always governing their professional activities as they are responsible.
“The US continues to maintain close intelligence activities that seriously undermine China's security at sea. This is the cause of the problem. We call on the US to stop such actions and prevent the future occurrence of any similar incidents,” Hong Lei said during a briefing, commenting on the CNN media reports.
He stressed that China has a right to self-defense. The official representative of the Foreign Ministry of China declined to comment on the incident and refused to give details of when it happened.
This was the second incident in the last month. In mid-May, it was reported that the two Chinese fighters intercepted the US reconnaissance plane over international waters of the East China Sea. The incident caused a row between Beijing and Washington.
The Pentagon said that the incident was dangerous, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry denied it, saying that the Chinese fighter kept at a safe distance.
