China said Wednesday it warned and “drove away” a U.S. destroyer that had sailed near the coast of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea — one of the most valuable shipping lanes globally.

The destroyer, USS Higgins, “illegally entered China’s territorial waters off Huangyan Island without the approval of the Chinese government,” the country’s defense ministry said, according to a CNBC translation of the statement in Mandarin.

Huangyan Island is the name China uses to refer to the shoal, which has been the subject of a maritime dispute between China and the Philippines.

China accused the U.S. military of “seriously” infringing its sovereignty, adding that America’s actions “severely undermine peace and stability in the South China Sea, and violate international law and basic norms governing international relations.”

The USS Higgins is a warship with the U.S. Seventh Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan. Sarah Merrill, a spokesperson for the fleet told CNBC that the USS Higgins was conducting a “freedom of navigation operation” in accordance with international law.

“China’s statement about this mission is false … The United States is defending its right to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Higgins did here. Nothing China says otherwise will deter us,” Merrill added.

The incident comes at a time when Washington and Beijing are locked in a trade spat that has seen the two issue incendiary statements, with China in March warning that it was prepared for “a trade war or any other type of war,” with the U.S., before tensions subsided.

On Tuesday, a Chinese warship had crashed into one of its own coast guard vessels as it chased a patrol boat belonging to the Philippines.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea as its own under its “nine-dash-line,” which rejects a 2016 ruling by an international arbitration court in the Netherlands, that found no legal or historical basis for Beijing’s claims. 

There have been several clashes between Chinese and Filipino ships in the South China Sea, with the Philippines accusing Beijing’s forces last year of pursuing Philippine vessels and directing lasers at patrolling aircrafts near another contested reef.

Clashes have involved boat collisions, water cannons and injuries to Filipino sailors, according to Filipino officials.

In May 2024, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said that should a Filipino citizen be killed in the South China Sea via an incident with the Chinese Coast Guard, it would almost certainly be a “red line” and come “very, very close to what we define as an act of war.”

He added that “our treaty partners I believe, also hold that same standard,” referring to U.S. forces. Washington has a mutual defense treaty with Manila since 1951, which states that an attack on either the Philippines or the U.S. in the Pacific is deemed to be an attack on the other.