Japan scrambled jets after 11 Chinese military planes flew near southern Japanese islands during what Beijing said was a drill to improve its long-range combat abilities, reports said Saturday.
The planes -- eight bombers, two intelligence gathering planes and one early-warning aircraft -- flew near Miyako and Okinawa on Friday without violating Japan's airspace, the Japanese defence ministry said in a statement released on Friday.
Some of them flew between the two islands while others made flights close to neighbouring islands, the ministry said.
A Chinese air force spokesman said several types of planes, including H-6K bombers, were involved in Friday's drill over the western Pacific, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
Shen Jinke said such open sea exercises had improved the force's long-distance combat abilities, according to Xinhua.
While there were no further comments from the Japanese ministry, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that it was "unusual" for China to dispatch such a large fleet close to Japan's airspace and the ministry was analysing the purpose of the mission.
Japan scrambles jets hundreds of times a year to defend its airspace, both against Russia and these days also against Chinese aircraft.
China expressed “regret” Monday over South Korea’s declaration of an air defense zone overlapping Beijing’s in the latest ratcheting up of tensions over territorial disputes involving Japan, China and South Korea that the U.S. has been seeking to tamp down.
China urged Seoul to proceed “safely and cautiously” in dealing with the overlap from “South Korea’s expansion of its air defense identification zone,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.
South Korea caught Beijing and Tokyo off guard Sunday with the announcement that Seoul’s existing air defense zone was being expanded about 150 miles to the south to include a submerged reef called Ieodo in South Korea and Suyan Rock in China.
Maj. Gen. Chang Hyok, a senior South Korean Defense Ministry official, said that in declaring the zone “our top priority is to prevent accidental military clashes in the area.”
The expansion meant that the air zones declared by South Korea, Japan and China over the East China Sea now all overlap. The Japanese and Chinese zones both include space over disputed islets called the Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China.
Unlike the air defense zone announced by China two weeks ago, the South Korean zone will not affect civilian flights.
East Asia and the U.S. had better get used to this sort of thing. China's heavy-handed declaration of an unusually demanding air defense identification zone (ADIZ) is only one in a series of moves in which the country will gradually try to exert control over its maritime approaches. Worryingly, it may also be an early example of China's Communist Party contriving to raise international tension as a means of rallying popular support at home.
Just about everything encourages China to be more assertive in neighboring waters, from its mistrustful, sometimes hostile view of the outside world to its domestic politics, rising strength and growing nationalism—and, not least, Japan's refusal to face up to its atrocious pre-1945 behavior.
Commercial air services are running normally through the ADIZ, which covers much of the East China Sea, including islands and a reef disputed by China, Japan and South Korea. There is no disruption even of flights by Japanese airlines, which are refusing to supply the Chinese authorities with the demanded flight plans for the zone, while other countries' commercial carriers cooperate. U.S., Japanese and South Korean military flights, however, have ignored Beijing's demands.
“From now it is a question of enforcement,” says Rory Medcalf, a specialist on Asian maritime security at the Lowy Institute, a think tank in Sydney. Having now asserted its rights, how—or will—China compel other countries to fully recognize them?
