Chinese sailors moon U.S. spy ship

From The Daily Telegraph:

In what a Pentagon official described as a “bizarre” incident, Chinese crew members on board one vessel bared their bottoms after the USNS Impeccable had sprayed them with hoses.

Pentagon officials said the incident on Sunday followed several days of “increasingly aggressive” acts by Chinese ships in the region. The incident took place in the South China Sea, about 75 miles south of China’s Hainan island.

“Five Chinese vessels shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity to USNS Impeccable while it was conducting routine operations in international waters,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

Both the Chinese and American ships seem to be slightly dodgy not-quite-official-navy vessels with plausibly deniable missions. This is how The New York Times described the ships:

The American vessel, the Impeccable, was carrying out a surveillance mission that involved towing sonar equipment designed for anti-submarine warfare, Pentagon officials said…

…The officials said the Chinese ships appeared to be a naval intelligence vessel, two smaller trawlers, a fisheries patrol boat and an official oceanographic ship.

The Impeccable did not carry large-caliber weapons and was operated by civilians for the Military Sealift Command, Pentagon officials said.

The surveillance mission, focused on undersea warfare, may be of particular interest to the Chinese military, which has invested heavily in a new fleet of diesel-powered attack submarines.

There’s nothing about the incident on Xinhua as of 8:30am this morning. The New York Times reports that the “United States has lodged a formal protest with the government in Beijing”.

UPDATE：

After seeing images of some of the ships involved, one has to question what kind of men sail on the good ship Impeccable.

This is the U.S. vessel, looking like something in which a James Bond villain would plan world domination:

Image source

These are the Chinese ships that harassed it:

Image source

Image source

UPDATE 2:

A Mainland media source has reported the incident: the Global Times, owned by The People’s Daily and often called jingoistic, today published an article on their website about the incident: America says survey ship surrounded and harrassed in South China Sea (in Chinese).

Xinhua has not reported the incident yet.

UPDATE 3：

Time-stamped 2009-03-10 15:18, Xinhua has at last reported the story on their English website, although the report is nowhere to be found in Chinese: China says U.S. naval ship breaks int’l, Chinese law.

Also, here is a detailed report on ‘FAS Strategic Security Blog’ that seems to know what it is talking about: US-Chinese Anti-Submarine Cat and Mouse Game in South China Sea.

UPDATE 4:

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Sea encounter prompts vow by U.S., China

March 12, 2009—Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and China Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi meet in Washington and agree to try to avoid future incidents.