It looks like the Chinese are upping their reaction to the US Navy’s freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea:
This Navy image obtained by naval website gCaptain.com shows a confrontation between the USS Decatur, left, and a Chinese destroyer in the South China Sea, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2018.
Photos of an encounter between a Navy guided-missile destroyer and Chinese warship shed light on just how close the ships came to colliding Sunday in the South China Sea.
Naval website gCaptain.com published a series of photos Tuesday showing the USS Decatur and the People’s Republic of China destroyer Luyang passing each other during the confrontation. The Chinese ship appears to veer close to the Decatur before the U.S. ship pulls away to avoid a collision.
A Navy official confirmed to Stars and Stripes on Wednesday that the photos are legitimate, but said it is unknown how the website got access to the images, which were not publicly released. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but I hope the Navy has plenty of video cameras on board to record any possible collision. This is because if a collision was to happen the Chinese would blame the US and then point to the Navy’s track record of two deadly collisions with civilian vessels in recent years.
With that said I doubt the Chinese would use one of their warships to collide with a US Navy ship. I would suspect they would have one of their civilian vessels, like a fishing ship collide with a US Navy ship and then blame the US to anger public opinion within China against the US.
