Japan has appealed to China to stop immediately its custom of sending fighter jets unusually close to Japanese surveillance aircraft, saying that the repeated incidents have the potential to cause a collision.
A Chinese JH-7 fighter-bomber, Japan’s Defense Ministry reported Wednesday and Thursday, approached to only 30 meters (98 feet) of a YS-11EB electronic-intelligence plane flown by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.
The ministry said this occurred over the East China Sea, beyond Japanese territorial airspace, and that the Japanese plane was not harmed.
China issued no immediate statement on this latest confrontation. In past statements, however, Beijing has complained that Japanese planes have flown close to Chinese planes to monitor what it termed as normal military training, calling on Tokyo to stop doing so.
Japan Says it is ‘Deeply Concerned’
Japan’s Foreign Ministry explained in a statement on Thursday night that Vice Minister Takehiro Funakoshi expressed ‘serious concern’ directly to Chinese Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao.
The ministry further said that Japan ‘strongly requested Beijing to halt the activity which may ‘provoke accidental collisions’ and strongly requested China to make sure similar behavior does not recur’.
Hostilities Over China’s Expanded Military Presence
Japan has increasingly expressed concerns over China’s rapid military buildup, especially off Japan’s southwestern coast. The two countries have accused each other of similar perilous encounters over recent weeks.
Only last month, Japan reported that a Chinese fighter aircraft approached a Japanese navy P-3C surveillance plane alarmingly close in the Pacific Ocean, where two Chinese aircraft carriers were conducting operations at the same time for the first time.
