They're not used to dealing with modern internet situations where statements take on a life of their own. A large military exercise is certainly within the scope of "a military response" but the fact that they didn't plan for people interpreting that statement as "we will shoot that ghoul's plane down" is telling.

Even the initial statement they released had some shonky translating of Xi's statement which makes me feel like they didn't run it by a natively bilingual person first.