A Chinese warship came within 137 metres of a US destroyer in the Taiwan Strait in “an unsafe manner”, US military officials said, as China blamed the US for “deliberately provoking risk” in the region.

US and Canadian navies were conducting a joint exercise in the strait, which separates the island of Taiwan and China, when the Chinese ship cut in front of the US guided-missile destroyer Chung-Hoon forcing it to slow down to avoid a collision, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement on Saturday.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its territory since the defeated Republic of China government fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists. Taiwan’s government says the PRC has never ruled the island and US President Joe Biden has said the US would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

China’s military rebuked the US and Canada for “deliberately provoking risk” after the countries’ navies staged a rare joint sailing through the sensitive Taiwan Strait.