BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese early warning aircraft and a U.S. Navy patrol plane had an "unsafe" encounter over the South China Sea this week, the U.S. Pacific Command said Friday, in the first such incident known to have taken place under President Donald Trump's administration.
The interaction between a Chinese KJ-200 and a U.S. Navy P-3C plane took place on Wednesday in international airspace, Pacific Command spokesman Robert Shuford said. He did not say what was unsafe about the encounter, although the term usually implies planes flying too close to one another.
Shuford says the U.S. plane was on a routine mission and operating according to international law. The Department of Defense and the Pacific Command "are always concerned about unsafe interactions with Chinese military forces," he said.
The Chinese Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.
However, the website of the Communist Party newspaper Global Times quoted an unidentified ministry official as saying that the Chinese pilot had responded in a "legal and professional manner."
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