China is flexing its muscle in ship showdown with U.S.

BEIJING - By confronting a U.S. surveillance ship off its coast this week, China appears to have sought to enforce ambitious maritime territorial claims and to have tested the mettle of the new U.S. administration.

China lashed out at Washington yesterday over Sunday's incident, in which five Chinese ships confronted the USNS Impeccable, a 281-foot U.S. submarine surveillance vessel, in what the Pentagon described as reckless and unprofessional behavior.

"The U.S. claim is totally inaccurate, confuses right and wrong, and is absolutely unacceptable to China," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

Ma said U.S. naval ships must ask China's permission any time they sailed within its exclusive economic zone, a 200-nautical-mile zone off its shores. The claim amounted to an assertive attempt to bar U.S. Navy vessels from approaching China's shores, even affecting transit of the sensitive Taiwan Strait.

Ma said Impeccable "broke relevant international law, and Chinese laws and regulations, and engaged in activities in China's exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea without China's permission."

He urged Washington to "take active measures to avoid similar incidents."

Some say that international law provides exclusive use only within the 12-mile territorial waters off countries' shores and that foreign ships have free passage through the broader exclusive economic zones.

"So long as the ships in this instance were transiting the EEZ outside the territorial waters, it would not appear that China's position has legal foundation," said Lester Ross, a lawyer with experience in international law at the Beijing office of the law firm WilmerHale. "I think it's a substantial stretch for China to maintain this position."

The Pentagon said the "harassment" of Impeccable occurred 75 nautical miles south of Hainan Island. It identified the Chinese boats as a naval intelligence-gathering ship, a Bureau of Maritime Fisheries Patrol vessel, an oceanographic patrol vessel and two small trawlers, and added that one vessel had maneuvered dangerously close to the U.S. ship.

China is expanding a naval base for attack and ballistic-missile submarines, which reportedly includes underwater tunnels for protection, on Hainan Island's southeast side.

The Pentagon said the incident was only one of a half-dozen "increasingly aggressive" acts since last Wednesday against Impeccable and a sister ship, Victorious - which included flybys by Chinese surveillance planes.

U.S. naval ships and China's sizable submarine fleet sometimes play cat and mouse as they take each other's measure. In 2006, a Chinese submarine stalked the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier near Hawaii and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes before being detected.

In 2007, China canceled a port call by Kitty Hawk and several escort ships in Hong Kong.