Japan denies ‘harassment’ of Chinese aircraft carrier

TOKYO: Tokyo has rejected Beijing’s accusations the Japanese military harassed a Chinese aircraft carrier strike group during 40 days of exercises in “distant waters” of the Pacific.

The Chinese navy said earlier this week that Japanese ships and aircraft “repeatedly engaged in close-range tracking, surveillance, harassment, and provocation”.

China said a formation led by its aircraft carrier Liaoning had operated in areas including the South China Sea and the western Pacific for “multiple rounds of day-and-night offensive and defensive exercise”.

The training involved ships and aircraft and tested “system-based operational capabilities in distant waters”, the Chinese navy said on its WeChat account.

It added that the Liaoning formation “maintained a high state of alert throughout, launching carrier-based aircraft for combat sorties… and steadily responding to the dangerous actions of the Japanese side”.

Japan’s Joint Staff said late Wednesday on X that the claims were “not factual”.

“The ministry of defense and self-defense forces will continue to conduct professional and steady vigilance and surveillance in the surrounding sea and airspace of our country,” it said.

In a June 1 statement, the Joint Staff said that the Chinese flotilla conducted exercises east of the Philippines in late May and that the Japanese military conducted “surveillance and information gathering”.

Long-frosty China-Japan ties have worsened after prime minister Sanae Takaichi, seen as an arch-conservative and security hawk, suggested in November that Japan might intervene militarily in any Chinese attempt to take Taiwan.

China, which regards the democratic island as part of its territory and has not ruled out force to annex it, has advised its citizens to avoid US ally Japan and imposed trade restrictions.

Under Takaichi, Japan has also accelerated its pivot towards a more proactive defence policy, further shaking off – with US encouragement – its pacifist outlook that has been in place since the end of World War II.

Tokyo said on Wednesday that China had detained two Japanese citizens for allegedly “smuggling goods subject to a national export and import ban”.

Japanese media reports said that the two Fuji Electric employees may have been detained over attempts to take rare earth minerals out of the country.