The United States released a video showing the destroyer crew Lanzhou preparing for a collision with the USS Decatur warship in the South China Sea in 2018.

The US Navy yesterday announced a video that had never been publicly disclosed in a Chinese warship close to and face the American destroyer in the East Sea on September 30, 2018. It shows the level of tension as China's crew of Lanzhou destroyer prepares for a collision with a US warship USS Decatur.

In the video, the Chinese battleship is close to the port of USS Decatur at a distance of more than 40 meters and seeks to force the US ship to divert. Chinese sailors at the front and stern prepared a series of buffer buoys that absorb the shock, avoiding damage to the hull in the event of a collision.

"It shows that the Chinese crew believes that the two ships are about to collide. It could also be a blow, showing that Lanzhou is taking her warnings very seriously," said Keith Patton, vice president of Strategic and Strategic Studies at the US Naval War College.

"This is a natural reaction to the risk of a collision," said Hu Bo, director of the Center for Maritime Strategic Studies at Peking University.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman said Lanzhou was deployed to hinder USS Decatur from exercising freedom of navigation within 12 nautical miles around the Chinese artificial island of illegal accretion on Ga Ven and Gac Ma stone belongs to Spratly Islands of Vietnam.

The U.S. Navy confirmed that the Chinese warship carried out a series of increasingly aggressive maneuvers, along with warnings that the American destroyer would leave the area. Facing the "dangerous and unprofessional" approach of Lanzhou ship, USS Decatur was forced to change direction to avoid collision.