A US Navy destroyer was spotted sailing through the Yellow Sea off the coast of Shanghai on Friday morning, in a move one observer described as the United States “playing with fire”. Collin Koh, a Research Fellow at RSIS, said that while the US regarded the destroyer’s movements as a freedom of navigation exercise, Beijing would not see it that way. “Besides the legal aspect, the political implication is that in the current, tense circumstances, such transits might not be viewed as normal,” he said.