"If they operate so closely it does not take much for there to be a mistake and someone gets hurt," said the White House, which calls for restoring military communications between the two armies. Pentagon has distributed this weekend images in which it is seen that a Chinese patrol ship zigzags in a "dangerous" way in the Taiwan Strait.

A similar situation had occurred ten days earlier, when a Chinese fighter jet came too close to a U.S. military aircraft, according to the Defense Department.