Chinese ships behaving badly

Washington Post:

The Pentagon today protested what it called harassment and aggressive shadowing of a U.S. Navy ocean surveillance ship by five Chinese vessels in international waters off the South China Sea on Sunday, warning such behavior could lead to collisions or the loss of life.

During the incident, the Chinese vessels "surrounded" the U.S.N.S. Impeccable and closed within 50 feet, with Chinese crew members "waving Chinese flags and telling Impeccable to leave the area," according to a Pentagon statement.

Impeccable sprayed fire hoses at one of the vessels in self-protection, but the Chinese crewmembers stripped to their underwear and the ship "continued closing to within 25 feet," the Pentagon said.

At that point, the Impeccable used a bridge-to-bridge radio to communicate it was leaving the area, but two of the Chinese vessels stopped directly in the path of the U.S. ship, forcing it to conduct an emergency stop.

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Under international law, the U.S. military can conduct activities "in waters beyond the territorial sea of another state without prior notification or consent" including in an exclusive economic zone of another country, said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman.

The U.S. Navy operates five ocean surveillance ships.

Navy ships and aircraft routine operate in the area where the incident took place, Upton said. "Chinese ships and aircraft routinely steam or fly near U.S. Navy ships in this area. However, these actions were considerably more aggressive and unprofessional than what we have seen and greatly increased the risk of collision or miscalculation," he said.

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This is pretty strange conduct for non military ships. Since China is a commie country, it probably owns these ships and is responsible for their conduct. It is hard to imagine a government like China would permit this kind of conduct without prior approval. If that is the case it makes little sense as government policy.

The CNN report on the encounter says taht at least one of the Chinese ships was a Navy intelligence collection ship, which suggest it was operating under orders from the Chinese government. It also suggest they may have been trying to hide some information from the US intelligence gathering ship.