On the Brink Again

Chinese fighter jet once again closely approached two aircrafts of Japanese Self-defense Force on Wednesday. Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Akitaka Saiki, called Chinese Ambassador to Japan, Cheng Yonghua, to his office and strictly opposed China’s intimidation and asked preventive measures for the future. China seems to be serious about controlling their newly set air defense identification zone over East China Sea, bringing more insecurity in this region.

According to news release by Ministry of Defense, a Chinese Su-27 fighter jet approached Japanese electronic measurement aircraft as close as one hundred feet and then reached Japanese graphic information collector aircraft to the distance of one hundred fifty feet. That was the second approach by Chinese fighter jet since late May. One government official told that it was a different Chinese pilot from whom Japanese Self-defense Force identified last month. Japanese government recognized Chinese consecutive intimidation as organized attempts to settle Chinese ADIZ with accomplished facts.

China contradicted to Japan this time, appealing that it had been Japanese aircraft which approached Chinese fighter jet. A spokesman of Chinese Defense Ministry announced that Chinese fighter jet was mobilized after Japanese two fighter jets reached Chinese Tu-154 so closely. The ministry uploaded video footage, showing Japanese jet flew along with Chinese jet.

Japanese officials got furious on those Chinese reactions. “There was no such fact as China asserted, and Japanese jet took certain distance from Chinese aircraft and flew stably,” told Japanese Defense Minister, Itsunori Onodera. An official of Defense Ministry argued that the video footage was not taken on Wednesday. But government of Japan has not released obvious evidence that denied Chinese assertion.

A spokeswoman of U.S. Department of State, Jen Psaki, accused China, saying “Any attempt to interfere with freedom of overflight in international airspace raises regional tensions and increases the risk of miscalculation, confrontation and unintended incidents.” She raised necessity to set a norm for emergency management in the region. However, negotiation to lay out a mechanism of marine communication has been interrupted since April last year. As long as China is reluctant to resume the talk, similar incidents can be repeated. China needs to be careful about warning messages delivered from both Japan and United States.