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WASHINGTON — A Chinese fighter jet performed an unsafe maneuver last week while close to a United States spy plane, Defense Department officials said Wednesday. It is the second time in just over a year that the Pentagon has accused Chinese pilots of inflaming tensions.

Military officials said the latest episode occurred Sept. 15 about 80 miles east of the Shandong Peninsula in the Yellow Sea. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Chinese fighter jet passed in front of an American RC-135 reconnaissance plane in an unsafe way.

Pentagon officials said the planes did not come close to colliding. But the Defense Department is reviewing the episode and may issue a démarche, or diplomatic complaint, to the Chinese authorities, as it did last year after a similar episode, officials said.

News of the episode came during a visit by President Xi Jinping of China to the United States, amid rising tensions between the two countries, particularly over Chinese actions involving disputed islands in the East and South China Seas.

Continue reading the main story

Xi Jinping’s Visit to the U.S.

See more Times coverage of the run-up to Mr. Xi’s first state visit to the U.S.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said that he did not know about the episode but that China was committed to maritime and aviation security. China is dedicated “to establishing mutual military trust with other countries to appropriately manage differences,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.

In August 2014, there was a similar, if more theatrical, episode in which a Chinese fighter jet flew within 30 feet of a Navy surveillance and reconnaissance plane in international airspace just off the Chinese coast.

The episode began when the Chinese warplane flew close underneath a Navy P-8 Poseidon. It then moved parallel to the naval plane, with the wingtips of the two aircraft separated by less than 30 feet.

As a final maneuver, the Chinese fighter jet executed a barrel roll, apparently to show off its weapons payload to the American pilot. A barrel roll is when a fighter jet rolls over and then levels out.

Military officials take such intercepts seriously, particularly given that a Chinese fighter jet collided with a United States Navy spy plane in April 2001 in the skies above Hainan Island. The Chinese pilot was killed, and the American plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan.

After the collision, the Chinese authorities detained the American crew for over a week and issued an angry initial statement saying that “the U.S. side has total responsibility for this event.”

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command at the time, issued his own angry statement, saying that the Chinese plane had been tailing the American jet, a practice that Beijing’s military had increasingly adopted.

China has continued to show off its military prowess to the United States in the years since the Hainan episode. This month, five Chinese Navy ships entered United States territorial waters off Alaska, Defense Department officials said. That move came as President Obama was touring Alaska.

Read more http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640350/s/4a1d2c7b/sc/11/l/0L0Snytimes0N0C20A150C0A90C240Cworld0Casia0Cpentagon0Esays0Echinese0Epilot0Eflew0Etoo0Eclose0Eto0Eus0Espy0Eplane0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm


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