Japan lodged a protest with China on Wednesday after two Chinese fighter jets flew abnormally close to Japanese military aircraft over the East China Sea, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said.
A Chinese SU-27 fighters approached within roughly 30 meters to the Self-Defense Forces' (SDF) YS-11 intelligence aircraft, and another SU-27 fighter came as close as 45 meters to a OP-3C surveillance plane, according to Onodera. But the Chinese warplanes did not intrude into Japanese airspace. "The flights were extremely dangerous and could have led to an accident. We cannot allow that to happen," Onodera told reporters, urging China to prevent such incidents and to set up a hotline.
"We cannot allow this to happen. I urge the Chinese military authorities who allow this kind of dangerous behavior to take place to behave morally," he said, adding that Tokyo has protested to Beijing over the incident through diplomatic channels. The minister said the SDF airplanes were conducting normal patrolling missions over international waters of the East China Sea. The incident occurred in less than three weeks that Japan said Chinese fighter jets approached to SDF surveillance planes in the both countries' air defense identification zones overlap on the East China Sea. Relations between the world's second and third-largest economies have sharply deteriorated since Tokyo's nationalization of part of the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea administered by Japan but claimed by China, through purchase from a private Japanese owner in 2012. The rocky islands, known as Diaoyu in China, lie in rich fishing grounds and waters thought to contain large deposits of oil and natural gas.
Last November, China unilaterally set up the defense zone over a large area of the East China Sea, obligating all aircraft passing the area to notify Chinese authorities of their flight plans and identify themselves. The air defense zone overlaps airspace over the disputed islands.