On 26 August 2024 a Chinese military aircraft briefly entered Japan’s southwestern airspace, the Japanese government has announced.
At a press briefing on 27 August Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the incident was an “absolutely unacceptable” territorial violation and safety threat, noting that it was the first time the Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) had detected a Chinese military aircraft in Japanese airspace.
The intercepted Chinese aircraft was a Y-9 reconnaissance platform, which circled above the Danjo Islands off the southwestern coast of Japan’s main southern island of Kyushu for two minutes, according to the JSDF Joint Staff. Japan Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) fighters were scrambled accordingly and warned the Chinese aircraft to leave the area, the JSDF Joint Staff said.
The Senkaku Islands near Taiwan, which are claimed and administered by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan, have been overflown by Chinese aircraft in the past, but the Danjo Islands are about 70 km southwest of the Goto Islands, which lie just 100 km to the west of the major Japanese city of Nagasaki.
According to reporting by the Associated Press (AP), Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on 27 August that China has “no intention” to violate any country’s airspace and that “the competent Chinese authorities are learning and verifying the situation”.
In his press briefing, however, Hayashi stressed that Chinese military activity around Japan in recent years has become “increasingly expanding and intensifying”. He added that Japan will continue watching Chinese military activity and do its utmost to respond to possible airspace violations.
AP reported that, according to the JASDF, it scrambled jets nearly 669 times between April 2023 and March 2024 in response to approaches to Japan’s airspace, with about 70% of those scrambles being against Chinese military aircraft, although none of those occasions actually included airspace violations.
