Japan and Australia urged calm yesterday after Chinese military aircraft locked radar on Japanese fighter jets, a month after the Japanese leader’s remarks on Taiwan that stirred tensions between Tokyo and Beijing.
Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said Japan formally protested the incident, calling it “an extremely regrettable” act and “a dangerous” one that “exceeded the scope necessary for safe aircraft operations.”
“We have lodged a strong protest with the Chinese side and demanded strict preventive measures,” Koizumi said.
Photo: AP
The Japanese Ministry of Defense said a Chinese J-15 military jet took off from the Chinese carrier Liaoning near Japan’s Okinawa on Saturday and “intermittently” locked its radar on Japanese F-15 fighter jets on two occasions, for about three minutes in the late afternoon and for about 30 minutes in the evening.
It was not made clear whether the radar lock incident involved the same Chinese J-15 both times.
Japanese fighter jets had been scrambled to pursue Chinese ones that were conducting aircraft takeoff and landing exercises in the Pacific. They were pursuing the Chinese aircraft at a safe distance and did not take actions that could be interpreted as provocation, the Kyodo news agency said, quoting defense officials, when the radar lock happened.
There was no breach of Japanese airspace, and no injury or damage was reported from the incident.
Senior Colonel Wang Xuemeng (王學猛), spokesperson for the Chinese navy, defended its flights near the Japanese island of Miyako, saying Beijing announced the exercises beforehand and accusing Japanese aircraft of “harassment.”
“We solemnly asked the Japanese side to immediately stop slandering and smearing, and strictly restrain its frontline actions,” Wang said in a statement posted yesterday on the Chinese Ministry of National Defense Web site.
Relations between Japan and China have worsened since Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said its military could get involved if China were to take action against Taiwan.
Takaichi later yesterday called the radar lock-on “extremely disappointing.”
“We will act calmly and resolutely,” she said, vowing to do the utmost in carrying out surveillance operations around Japanese waters and airspace, while closely watching Chinese military activity around Japan.
Japan and Australia, whose defense ministers held scheduled talks in Tokyo yesterday, expressed worry over the development.
“We are deeply concerned by the actions of China in the last 24 hours,” Australian Minister of Defence Richard Marles told a joint news conference after holding talks with Koizumi. “We expect those interactions to be safe and professional.”
Australia does “not want to see any change to the status quo across the Taiwan Straits,” Marles said, adding that China is his country’s largest trade partner and he wants to have productive relations with Beijing.
“We continue to advocate to China about these issues again, in a very calm, sensible and moderate way,” he said.
Japan and Australia yesterday agreed to bolster military ties to lead the region’s multilateral defense cooperation. The two ministers agreed to form a comprehensive “framework for strategic defense coordination” and discuss further details.
Tokyo has been accelerating its military buildup while expanding its defense ties beyond its only treaty ally, the US. It now considers Australia to be a semi-ally.
Saturday’s radar lock is believed to be the first involving Japanese and Chinese military jets.
Fighter jets use radars for search operations or fire control before a missile launch.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, the Philippine coast guard said China fired three flares toward a fisheries bureau plane on patrol in the South China Sea on Saturday.
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