Days after the U.S. accused China of needling its military in international waters, the Asian nation’s defense secretary General Li Shangfu said war with America would be an “unbearable disaster” for the world.
It was Shangfu’s first major speech since being named China’s defense minister, BBC News reported. He spoke at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, an annual Asia-Pacific region security summit also attended by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Shangfu spoke the same day the U.S. released video of a Chinese destroyer cutting so closely in front of a U.S. destroyer that the latter had to slam on its brakes. China accused the U.S. and Canada, whose ship was also sailing nearby at the time, of making “unsafe” maneuvers in the Taiwan strait and of “deliberately provoking risk.”
Both the U.S. and Canada said they were well within their legal rights in international waters.
“Chung-Hoon and Montreal’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the combined U.S.-Canadian commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Indo-Pacific Command stated. “The U.S. military flies, sails, and operates safely and responsibly anywhere international law allows.”
A few days before that, a Chinese J-16 fighter pilot “flew directly in front of the nose” of a U.S. RC-135 fighter plane as it conducted routine operations in international airspace last Friday, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement, branding it an ” unnecessarily aggressive maneuver.”
According to defense leaders in the U.S., China’s military has been getting more and more aggressive of late, increasingly intercepting aircraft and ships belonging to the U.S. over the past five years.
Austin had been pushing for a sidebar meeting with Shangfu during the summit, but Shangfu turned him down.
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