China’s People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command said its navy tracked, warned and “expelled” the U.S. destroyer USS Higgins after the ship sailed inside waters Beijing claims around Scarborough Shoal, also known as Huangyan Dao, on Wednesday. State media reports said Type 22 missile boats were dispatched to shadow the vessel. The U.S. Navy rejected Beijing’s account, stating that the Higgins and the littoral combat ship USS Cincinnati conducted a lawful freedom-of-navigation operation roughly 30 nautical miles from the shoal. A Seventh Fleet spokesperson said the United States would continue to “fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows.” The confrontation follows an incident two days earlier in which a Chinese destroyer and a Chinese coast-guard vessel collided while attempting to block the Philippine coast-guard ship BRP Suluan near the same atoll. Manila condemned the “dangerous maneuvers,” and diplomats from Japan, Australia and New Zealand separately voiced concern about rising risks in the busy waterway. During a Philippine surveillance flight over Scarborough on Wednesday, a Chinese J-15 fighter closed to about 200 feet of a Philippine Coast Guard Cessna Caravan carrying journalists and shadowed it for roughly 20 minutes, according to coast-guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela. Radio transmissions from Chinese naval vessels demanding the aircraft leave the area were audible from the cockpit, he said. Scarborough Shoal lies about 200 kilometres off the Philippines and inside its exclusive economic zone, but China has controlled access to the rich fishing ground since 2012. A 2016 international arbitral ruling invalidated Beijing’s broad South China Sea claims, which China rejects. The latest incidents underline the potential for miscalculation as Chinese, U.S. and Philippine forces operate in close proximity in one of the world’s most contested maritime regions.