A Chinese fighter jet came within about 150 feet of a Japanese naval reconnaissance plane over the weekend, the Japanese Defense Ministry said Thursday, an action the US ambassador to Tokyo called “dangerous” and “reckless.”
Saturday morning’s close encounter between the Japanese P-3C Orion, a four-engined, turboprop anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft and a J-15 jet fighter launched from the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong occurred over international waters of the Pacific, according to a statement from Japan’s Defense Ministry.
The encounter lasted about 40 minutes, as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense (JMSDF) force plane was on a surveillance mission, according to the statement. The Chinese jet came within 45 meters of the Japanese plane “horizontally,” the ministry said.
Another close encounter between a Chinese fighter and a Japanese plane occurred Sunday, with the Chinese warplane passing about 900 meters (2,950 feet) directly in front of the flight path of a P-3C, the ministry statement said.
“Such unusual approaches by Chinese military aircraft could lead to an accidental collision,” it said.
US Ambassador to Japan George Glass was blunter in his criticism.
“The recent dangerous maneuver by a Chinese fighter jet that put Japanese crewmembers’ lives in peril,” Glass said in a post on X, sarcastically calling the incident “another of Beijing’s ‘good neighbor’ efforts.”
“Whether it’s harassing Philippine ships, attacking Vietnamese fishermen, or firing flares at Australian aircraft, Beijing knows only reckless aggression,” Glass said.
In the past several years, China has been accused of all those actions in the South China Sea and other areas of the Indo-Pacific.
At a defense forum in Singapore last month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said China exhibits a pattern of harassing and trying to intimidate its neighbors.
“We have all seen the videos and pictures of water cannons and ship-to-ship collisions and illegal boardings at sea. We are also seeing the illegal seizing and militarizing of lands in the South China Sea,” he said at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
“These actions reveal a lack of respect for neighbours, and they challenge sovereignty, freedom of navigation and overflight,” he said.
The Chinese-Japanese encounters occurred in international waters in the Pacific as Beijing sent two aircraft carrier groups to the region for training exercises.
The Chinese carriers and their escorts were practicing far-sea defense and joint operations, a military statement said.
“This is a routine arrangement included in the annual training plan, aiming to improve the Chinese PLA Navy’s ability to fulfill missions. The training complies with relevant international law and practice, and is not targeted at specific countries or entity,” Senior Capt. Wang Xuemeng, spokesperson for the Chinese PLA Navy, said in a written statement.
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