U.S. aircraft intercepted, South China Sea tensions rise again

Two Chinese fighter jets carried out an "unsafe" intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, a further escalation of tensions in and around the contested waterway.

The incident took place in international airspace on Tuesday as the U.S. maritime patrol aircraft carried out "a routine U.S. patrol," a Pentagon statement said.

China's Foreign Ministry early Thursday called on the U.S. to stop close reconnaissance activities.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular briefing that the Chinese aircraft kept a safe distance from the U.S. plane, which was flying close to China's island province of Hainan.

The incident comes a week after China scrambled fighter jets as a U.S. Navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea.

Another Chinese intercept took place in 2014 when a Chinese fighter pilot flew acrobatic manoeuvres around a U.S. spy plane. 

The intercept is also days before President Barack Obama travels to parts of Asia from May 21-28, which will include a Group of Seven summit in Japan and his first trip to Vietnam.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.

Spratly Islands source of contention

Washington has accused Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea after creating artificial islands while Beijing, in turn, has criticized increased U.S. naval patrols and exercises in Asia. 

The Pentagon statement said the Department of Defense was addressing the issue through military and diplomatic channels.

"Over the past year, DoD has seen improvements in PRC actions, flying in a safe and professional manner," the Pentagon statement said, using an acronym for the People's Republic of China.

In 2015, the United States and China announced agreements on a military hotline and rules of behaviour to govern air-to-air encounters called the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES).

"This is exactly the type of irresponsible and dangerous intercepts that the air-to-air annex to CUES is supposed to prevent," said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Poling said either some part of China's airforce "hadn't gotten the message," or it was meant as a signal of displeasure with recent U.S. freedom of navigation actions in the South China Sea.

"If the latter, it would be very disappointing to find China sacrificing the CUES annex for political gamesmanship."

The Pentagon last month called on China to reaffirm it has no plans to deploy military aircraft in the Spratly Islands after China used a military plane to evacuate sick workers from Fiery Cross Reef, where it has built a 3,000-metre runway.

In April 2001, an intercept of a U.S. spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the American plane to make an emergency landing at a base on China's Hainan island.

The 24 U.S. air crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologized for the incident. That encounter soured U.S.-Chinese relations in the early days of President George W. Bush's first administration.

Last month, the Pentagon said that Russia had intercepted a U.S. Air Force aircraft over the Baltic Sea in an "unsafe and unprofessional" way.