It’s hard to call the collision of two multi-thousand-ton military ships “fortunate,” but that’s exactly what analysts are saying about the incident in the South China Sea this week that left a China Coast Guard ship with a heavily damaged bow after it hit a People’s Liberation Army Navy guided-missile destroyer.

China and the Philippines are trading blame over an incident earlier this week in which two Chinese ships collided in the South China Sea, where both nations have competing territorial claims.