Well, this is certainly possible:
Given the further flouting of both international law and personal commitments, it is left to the United States as the ultimate guarantor of freedom of the seas to use its indispensable capabilities to block Beijing’s maritime aggression. Fortunately, British, French, Australian and other allies are joining in the U.S. Navy’s Freedom of Navigation Operations.
China wants to stop this multinational “ganging up” and probably is weighing whether to cause an incident directly against a U.S. Navy ship or aircraft, as one of its fighter jets did against an EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft in 2001, or to choose an allied target instead and complicate a U.S. response.
My impression is that the EP-3 collision was an accident in a mission to brush us back from international air space near China that China claims, but not intended to result in the loss of a Chinese fighter and the emergency landing of our EP-3 on Chinese territory (that allowed the Chinese to examine the plane close up for whatever the crew didn't wreck on the way down).
But I have worried for a while that China might try to use force against our ships conducting FONOPs in waters claimed by China:
We need to guard against the possibility that China will try to disable one of our warships as it makes a freedom of navigation patrol.
China forced our EP-3 plane to land in China back in 2001, recall. Let's not have one of our ships disabled with a propeller fouled in fishing nets and then set upon by Chinese coast guard vessels to tow it to port in a "rescue."
The need for American overwatch of American warships on FONOPs extends to our allies' ships conducting FONOPs.
The author points to China giving "bloody nose" messages to India in 1962 and to Vietnam in 1979.
But China got the bloody nose in 1979 as their invasion flailed against second line Vietnamese ground forces. We should make sure China goes 1:3 if they try that against America or our allies in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, or the Taiwan Strait.
