China and Japan exchange protests after ‘right-wing extremists’ fly plane over disputed islands

Beijing and Tokyo exchanged diplomatic protests after an unknown Japanese group flew a civilian plane over a disputed island in the East China Sea.

The Senkaku are a chain of five uninhabited islands and reefs in the East China Sea, located northeast of Taiwan and southwest of Okinawa. They are administered by Japan but claimed by both Taiwan and China, which calls them the Diaoyu islands.

The Chinese coastguard said they launched a helicopter to “expel” a Japanese civilian aircraft that had entered the airspace over the islands on Saturday morning.

The head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Asian affairs department, Liu Jinsong, lodged a protest with the chief minister of Japan’s embassy, Yokochi Akira, over the alleged intrusion by “Japanese right-wing extremists piloting a civilian aircraft”.

Mr Liu “urged the Japanese side to immediately stop illegal infringement activities and take concrete measures to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents”.

Japanese authorities said they were investigating a possible connection between the Chinese helicopter's airspace intrusion and a Japanese civilian aircraft flying in the area around the same time.

Neither Beijing nor Tokyo provided any specific details about the so-called “right-wing extremists” who allegedly flew the plane over the disputed islands.

The Japanese foreign ministry said that the Chinese helicopter took off from one of four coast guard boats which entered Japan's territorial waters around the Senkaku islands. The helicopter violated Japanese airspace for about 15 minutes on Saturday, the ministry said, adding that it had lodged a "very severe protest" with Beijing.

“The Self Defence Forces responded by scrambling fighter jets,” the ministry said.

Japan’s vice minister for foreign affairs, Takehiro Funakoshi, issued a “strong protest” to Beijing over the “intrusion” and “violation of Japan’s territorial airspace”.

This was the first Chinese intrusion of Japanese airspace since a reconnaissance aircraft flew off the southern prefecture of Nagasaki last August.

China routinely sends coast guard vessels and aircraft into waters and airspace around the islands, forcing Japan to mobilise its fighter jets.

In the past, Japanese right-wing nationalist factions, often loosely organised with some links to militaristic symbolism, have escalated tensions with China through provocative actions. In 1996, the ultranationalist Nihon Seinensha built a lighthouse on one of the disputed islands, sparking widespread protests in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In the wake of the latest incident, defence ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said: "China demands Japan strictly restrain the activities of its citizens, stop the provocative acts that complicate the situation in the waters and airspace around the Diaoyu islands, and avoid bringing unstable and unsafe factors affecting the overall situation of the development of China-Japan relations.”