"Aside from flashing laser light twice, the Chinese ship also made "dangerous manoeuvres" about 150 yards (137m) from the Filipino ship's starboard side, authorities said."
For those of you that aren't sailors/ex-sailors, I cannot stress just how close and scary 150 yds is when you are at sea. That close, it looks like you can reach over and touch the other vessel. We would get nervous when it was a friendly vessel, I wouldn't want to be that close to a hostile vessel.
Edit: Also, there were reports that a Chinese satelite was shooting laser beams down over Hawaii recently. It was chalked up to just atmospheric testing, topographical ranging, etc. though. There wasn't any real threat/danger.