In a statement late Saturday, the Chinese Defense Ministry said it was in talks with the United States but criticized Washington for what it called an “inappropriate” exaggeration of the dispute. The American reaction, it said, is “not conducive to solving the problem smoothly.” 
 
 “We hereby express regrets for that,” it said. 
 
 Although the ministry said the drone would be returned to the United States in a “proper way,” the statement stopped short of saying when or how the device, which Chinese and American analysts say was most likely used to gather intelligence about Chinese submarine activity in contested waters, would be returned, or if it would be handed back intact. 
 
 President-elect Donald J. Trump entered the fray Saturday morning, accusing China on Twitter of acting improperly. “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,” he said. 
 
 The overseas edition of The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, said on its social media account Saturday night that the Chinese capture of the drone was legal because rules about drone activities had not been clearly written. “This is the gray area,” the newspaper said. “If the U.S. military can send the drone, surely China can seize it.” 
 
 In its statement, the Defense Ministry scolded the United States over what it called its longstanding practice of conducting “close-in reconnaissance and military surveys” in waters claimed by China. The Chinese government has often complained to senior American officials, including President Obama, that the United States repeatedly intrudes by air and ship into waters close to China. The ministry’s statement reiterated the complaint, saying “China firmly opposes it and urges the U.S. side to stop such operations.” 
 
 A Chinese naval vessel seized the drone, which had been launched on Thursday from an American ship, the Bowditch, in waters off the Philippines. The American crew was in the process of retrieving the device when a small boat dispatched from the Chinese vessel took it as the American sailors looked on. 
 
 CHINA TAIWAN VIETNAM Hong Kong Gulf of Tonkin Hainan The “Nine Dash Line” China’s historical territorial claim PHILIPPINES Paracel Islands LAOS THAILAND Scarborough Shoal Subic Bay Approximate site of incident Manila CAMBODIA Spratly Islands South China Sea Sulu Sea 300 Miles CHINA TAIWAN Hong Kong PHILIPPINES Approximate site of incident Subic Bay The “Nine Dash Line” China’s historical territorial claim South China Sea 300 Miles 
 
 The action came two weeks after Mr. Trump angered Beijing by speaking by phone to the leader of Taiwan, and almost a week after he criticized China for building military bastions in the South China Sea. American officials were trying to determine whether the seizure was a response to Mr. Trump or whether it was just one more escalatory step in China’s long-term plan to try to push the United States Navy out of the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest commercial and military waterways. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 The Pentagon formally protested the capture of the drone, saying it was stolen American military property. The Pentagon said the drone had been carrying out scientific research, and asked China to return it. American experts, however, said the drone might have been designed to help follow China’s submarine buildup, a critical part of the country’s growing naval strength as it seeks unfettered control of the South China Sea and unimpeded access to the Pacific and Indian oceans. 
 
 A retired Chinese rear admiral, Yang Yi, speaking earlier at a conference sponsored by a state-run newspaper, The Global Times, said the Americans had invited the Chinese sailors to take the drone by sailing in the waters close to the Scarborough Shoal, fishing grounds that are claimed by China and the Philippines. 
 
 The Americans “deliver these things to our home,” and it would be more than natural for Chinese sailors to seize the drone and examine it, Admiral Yang said. 
 
 “If Trump and the American government dare to take actions to challenge the bottom line of China’s policy and core interests,” he said, “we must drop any expectations about him and give him a bloody nose.” 
 
 Reached by telephone, the president of a state-affiliated think tank, Wu Shicun, said the United States had most likely been conducting intelligence reconnaissance to detect Chinese submarine routes in the South China Sea. Mr. Wu, who heads the National Institute for South China Sea Studies and advises the government on maritime matters, described the drone “as a new way for the United States to conduct intelligence gathering.” 
 
 “Previously the United States conducted surveillance with warships in the nearby waters of China, or by aircraft,” he said. “Now the unmanned underwater vehicle is a new approach.” The Chinese were justified in taking the unmanned underwater vehicle, he said. 
 
 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. 
 
 The episode occurred in seas about 50 miles northwest of Subic Bay, a major port of the Philippines and a former United States Navy base, the Pentagon said. That means the Bowditch was within 200 miles of Scarborough Shoal, American analysts said. 
 
 The American vessel appeared to be outside the perimeter of the “nine-dash line,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. China drew the line in the late 1940s as it laid claim to about 90 percent of the South China Sea. 
 
 “China has no legal basis to take actions like these on the high seas, but doing so outside Beijing’s ambiguous claim line is particularly egregious and will make the incident especially hard to justify,” Ms. Rapp-Hooper said. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who is nurturing warm ties with China and has warned he may break longstanding military relations with the United States, took a conciliatory approach over the Chinese action. 
 
 “I will not impose anything on China,” he said at a news conference in Manila on Saturday. “Why? Because politics in Southeast Asia is changing.” This was a reference to his tilt away from the United States, a treaty ally, since taking office in June. He referred to China as “the kindest soul of all.” 
 
 Photo 
 
 The Philippines also took a forgiving attitude after the release of satellite images on Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that appeared to show that China has installed weapons on the seven artificial islands it has built in the Spratly archipelago, not far from the Philippines in the South China Sea. 
 
 “There is nothing that we can do about that now, whether or not it is being done for purposes of further militarizing these facilities that they have put up,” the foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay Jr., said, reflecting the weak state of the Philippines military. “We cannot stop China at this point in time and say, ‘Do not put that up.’ ” 
 
 By seizing the drone so close to the Philippines, China may have been trying to further weaken the already frayed United States alliance with Manila, American experts said. 
 
 The conciliatory reaction by the Philippines, even as the United States was making stern demands on Beijing, would complicate Washington’s efforts to convince China that its actions were unacceptable, a senior American military official said on Saturday. 
 
 In an important ruling in July, an international tribunal in The Hague decided against China, saying that the Scarborough Shoal was entitled only to a 12-mile territorial zone, not 200 miles as the Chinese assert. China has refused to recognize the ruling. 
 
 Mr. Duterte on Saturday said he was ignoring the Hague ruling even though the case had been brought by the previous Philippines government. “In the play of politics now, I will set aside the arbitral ruling,” he said. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 The drone incident, according to a Pentagon account, began when a Chinese Navy vessel that was shadowing the Bowditch — a common practice in the South China Sea — pulled up not far from the ship. It then dispatched a small boat to seize the drone as the American crew was recovering it from the water. The Pentagon described the vehicle as an unclassified “ocean glider” system used to gather military oceanographic data such as salinity, water temperature and sound speed. 
 
 An American naval expert did not disagree with Mr. Wu’s notion of what the Americans were probably doing. “Warfare and surveillance in the age of drones has not yet developed an agreed-upon set of rules,” said Lyle J. Goldstein, an associate professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College, in Rhode Island. 
 
 “This is increasingly a major problem as both China and the U.S. are deploying ever more air and naval drones into the contested waters and airspace of the Western Pacific,” he said. 
 
 The seizure may have been just another way for Beijing to provoke the United States in a gray zone, just under the threshold of actual hostilities, Mr. Goldstein said. He said it was a time for “cooler heads to prevail,” to halt a cycle of escalation that “cannot end well for either side.” 
 
 In some respects, the seizure was not a surprise but just another step in China’s increased harassment of the American Navy in the South China Sea, several American naval experts said. 
 
 In March 2009, soon after President Obama took office, five Chinese ships swarmed an American surveillance vessel, the Impeccable, 75 miles off Hainan island, the southernmost province of China. The Impeccable was towing sonar equipment designed for anti-submarine warfare, and the Chinese ships got as close as 25 feet from the ship in what the Pentagon called “illegal and dangerous” maneuvers. ||||| This file aerial view taken on July 27, 2012, shows part of the city of Sansha on the island of Yongxing, also known as Woody island in the disputed Paracel chain, which China now considers part of Hainan province. (AFP/Getty) 
 
 A Chinese naval ship seized an underwater naval drone that was being used by the U.S. Navy to test water conditions in the South China Sea, the Pentagon said Friday. 
 
 Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the incident occurred on Dec. 15 about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay, in international waters in the South China Sea. 
 
 The USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey vessel with a mostly civilian crew, was in the process of recovering two unmanned ocean gliders, which are used to collect information about water conditions that can help U.S. vessels operate. A Chinese ship, a Dalang-III class submarine rescue vessel, approached the area, coming within about 500 yards of the Bowditch before dropping a small boat in the water. It seized one of the gliders and brought it aboard, Davis said. 
 
 The Bowditch contacted the Chinese ship and asked for the glider to be returned. Officials aboard the Chinese ship acknowledged the radio communication, Davis said, but said they were returning to normal operations. The ship then left the area. 
 
 “We would like it back and we would like this not to happen again,” Davis said, referring to the underwater drone. The incident occurred around 1:45 p.m. local time, the Navy said. 
 
 
 
 
 
 A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record, said the United States has made an official diplomatic communication to the Chinese government, “demanding the return of our stuff.” 
 
 There was no immediate response from Beijing, the official said. 
 
 The incident comes amid mounting tensions over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, which have alarmed U.S. allies in the region and prompted the U.S. military to conduct “freedom of navigation” operations intended as a show of force. This week, a U.S. think tank reported that China has placed antiaircraft weapons on artificial islands, threatening to intensify the debate over disputed areas. 
 
 Davis said ships such as the Bowditch routinely conduct operations in the South China Sea. The Navy said the drones are operated by the Naval Oceanographic Office, which states in its promotional materials that it maintains the largest glider fleet in the world, with more than 130 “littoral battlespace sensing” crafts. 
 
 The gliders are piloted by civilian employees of the oceanographic office from Stennis Space Center in Mississippi through the use of encrypted satellite communications. They typically travel just a few miles per hour and are tracked by oceanographic vessels such as the USNS Bowditch. The data the drones collect is unclassified. 
 
 Wu Shicun, president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said the unmanned vehicle posed “a threat to China’s national security” because it could be used to “spy” on China’s land reclamation efforts or collect information about Chinese submarine routes. 
 
 “Why are [the underwater vehicles] there? I think the U.S. knows it very well,” he said. 
 
 Sen. John McCain, (R.-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Friday afternoon that the seizure is a “flagrant violation” of the laws of the seas. 
 
 “China had no right to seize this vehicle,” McCain said. “And the United States must not stand for such outrageous conduct.” 
 
 McCain said the incident fits a pattern of increasingly destabilizing Chinese behavior. 
 
 “This behavior will continue until it is met with a strong and determined U.S. response, which until now the Obama administration has failed to provide,” McCain said. “Freedom of the seas and the principles of the rules-based order are not self-enforcing. American leadership is required in their defense.” 
 
 Chinese analysts, however, downplayed the incident. “It won’t have too much impact on the Sino-U.S. relationship,” said Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Relations at Nanjing University. “China and the U.S. have been through conflicts far more severe.” 
 
 It’s not clear how President-elect Donald Trump, who has been the subject of Chinese government ire since his recent outreach to leadership of Taiwan, will approach those maritime disputes. But he has criticized Beijing for “building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea,” in addition to his complaints about Chinese monetary and trade policies. 
 
 Patrick Cronin, an expert on Asia-Pacific security at the Center for a New American Security, called the seizure “a brazen, calculated act of coercive diplomacy” and said it was intended to send a message to Trump ahead of his inauguration. 
 
 “Rather than wait several weeks, Beijing is advancing a provocative action offshore from a U.S. ally that had recently kowtowed to China,” Cronin said, referring to the incident’s location near the Philippines. The signal China wishes to send is unambiguous, he said: “‘If you challenge our sovereignty we will challenge yours.’ The U.S. response needs to be equally clear: if anyone messes with with our Navy the response will not be limited to words.” 
 
 Both sides are merely signalling, said Qiao Liang, a military commentator and major general in the Chinese air force. “You called Tsai Ing-wen, sending a signal; we capture the UUV in South China Sea, our own exclusive economic zone,” he said. “It’s certainly a signal to the U.S.” 
 
 But, he added, “there will not be any escalation before Trump takes office.” 
 
 Luna Lin contributed from Beijing. 
 
 China has laid claim to a number of islands in the South China Sea, building airbases on tiny spits of land while installing powerful radar and missile launchers. Here's why. (Jason Aldag,Julie Vitkovskaya/The Washington Post / Satellite photos courtesy of CSIS) 
 
 Read more: 
 
 China puts new weapons on South China Sea islands, report says 
 
 Photos: China’s rapid island-building strategy continues 
 
 China testing Obama as it expands its influence in Southeast Asia
– In what appears to have been a spelling error and not a play on words, Donald Trump slammed China's "unpresidented" seizure of a US underwater drone in a tweet Saturday morning. "China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act," he tweeted. He eventually corrected the spelling to "unprecedented." The AP, which describes the Thursday incident in the South China Sea as one of the most serious encounters between the US and Chinese militaries in years, reports that China announced earlier on Saturday that it is in talks with the US about "appropriately handling" the issue. Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Friday that the drone was seized while collecting scientific data near the Philippines. "It is ours. It's clearly marked as ours. We would like it back, and we would like this not to happen again," Davis said. The Guardian reports that in his Friday press conference, Obama warned Trump against letting relations with China enter "full conflict" mode with a belligerent stance on Taiwan and other issues. "The idea of 'One China is at the heart of their conception as a nation," Obama said, "and so if you are going to upend this understanding, you have to have thought through what are the consequences."