The incursion last week of a Chinese military plane into Japanese airspace did not please Tokyo at all. And it raises questions: for the first time, China has come to challenge its neighbor in the air.
“The Chinese military should use Google Maps, it’s free. Of course, they’ll have to use a VPN to get through the Chinese censorship wall!” The dig comes from Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan. Not very diplomatic by nature, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff never misses an opportunity to sarcastically denounce, to the great displeasure of the White House, China’s warmongering in the region. The latest object of his mockery: Beijing’s slurred explanations after the incursion on Monday, August 26, of a Chinese surveillance plane into Japanese airspace. A first since the archipelago began monitoring its skies in 1967.
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The Y-9 model “spy” aircraft remained for about two minutes near the Danjo Islands in the East China Sea, southwest of the country. A “totally unacceptable” incursion that constitutes “a serious violation of sovereignty,” thundered Defense Minister Minoru Kihara. “We are currently carrying out checks. China has no intention of violating anyone’s airspace,” pleaded Lin Jian, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in essence, inviting the media “not to overinterpret the incident.”
More and more Chinese incursions
The Chinese Navy has been increasing its incursions into the China Sea for years, encroaching on territorial waters, or waters claimed as such, by surrounding nations: the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan of course. Frustrated by the string of islands that, from Taiwan to the Japanese island of Kyushu, form a wall that limits its maritime ambitions in the Pacific Ocean, it has continued to demonstrate its presence there. This summer, it had thus dispatched the aircraft carrier Shandong and its escort, from where planes and helicopters carried out training maneuvers. Again on Saturday, for the tenth time in three years, a Chinese warship[…]
- challenges.fr
