Beijing yesterday condemned what it called “dangerous behavior” by a Japanese military plane over the Pacific Ocean after Tokyo said that Chinese fighter jets flew unusually close to its aircraft at the weekend.
The Japanese government had complained to China over the incident, in which no Japanese military personnel were reported injured.
A Chinese J-15 from the Shandong aircraft carrier followed a Japanese P-3C patrol plane for 40 minutes on Saturday, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said.
Photo: AFP / Japanese Ministry of Defense
Two J-15 jets did the same for 80 minutes on Sunday, the ministry added.
“During these long periods, the jets flew unusually close to the P-3C, and they flew within 45 meters” of the patrol plane on both days, a ministry official said.
Also on Sunday, Chinese jets cut across airspace about 900m ahead of a P-3C Japanese patrol plane at the same altitude — a distance a P-3C can reach within a few seconds at cruising speed, Tokyo said.
“We do not believe that this approach was made by mistake,” said Yoshihide Yoshida, the Japanese military’s chief of staff. “Given it happened for 40 minutes and 80 minutes for two days in a row, our understanding is that it was done on purpose.”
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian (林劍) hit back at the Japanese description of the events.
“The root cause of the risk to maritime and air security was the close reconnaissance of China’s normal military activities by a Japanese warplane,” Lin said. “The Chinese side urges the Japanese side to stop this kind of dangerous behavior.”
The incident followed the sighting in recent days of two Chinese aircraft carriers sailing in the Pacific Ocean simultaneously for the first time.
Japan this week said that the aircraft carriers’ activity — described by China as “routine training” — showed the expanding geographic scope of Beijing’s military.
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