Chinese military jet crashes, pilot safely ejects

BEIJING: A Chinese naval fighter jet crashed on Saturday during a training exercise but its pilot successfully ejected from the plane, the military said.

The fighter jet, from the Chinese military’s Southern Theater Command, crashed in an open area in the southern island province of Hainan, the navy said in a statement on social media.

The southern command oversees some of the country’s most sensitive areas including the South China Sea, where there has been a spate of violent clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels in recent years around disputed reefs and islands in the area.