The U.S. Navy issued a statement on Tuesday framing China’s Sunday response to a freedom-of-navigation operation in the South China Sea as “safe but unprofessional.”
After two Navy vessels — the USS Higgins, a guided-missile destroyer, and USS Antietam, a guided-missile cruiser — conducted the “routine” exercise Sunday near the Paracel Islands, China dispatched two warships to issue warnings to leave the area.
CBS reports that the Navy assessed the Chinese ships as moving erratically but never actually coming in danger of colliding with the U.S. forces.
On Sunday, the Navy defended the exercise in the Paracels as a “routine and regular Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs), as we have done in the past and will continue to do in the future,” but declined to elaborate further on Tuesday.
Last week, the U.S. disinvited China from participating in the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise due to destabilizing activity in the region.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denied the decision as “ratcheting up [of] anything.”
“What we are doing is we are cooperating with China wherever we can, and we are going to have to also confront them when we believe that the rule of law or that matters that can destabilize the region are being pursued,” he told the Washington Examiner while traveling in Colorado.
