We keep provoking the Chinese and we keep bitching when they pushback.

The 'dangerous proximity' is blustering rhetoric. These are fighter pilots and they know exactly where the flares eject from and fall away to.

They would not risk endangering a foreign asset.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-13/china-pla-fighter-flares-raaf-south-china-sea/104932884