China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has accused Japan of issuing military threats against China, calling the behaviour “completely unacceptable,” after Tokyo said Chinese fighter jets had locked their radar onto Japanese military aircraft.
Japan condemned the radar lock-on as a dangerous action, while China countered that Japan had sent aircraft to repeatedly approach and disrupt the Chinese navy during previously announced carrier-based flight training east of the Miyako Strait.
Tensions between the two countries have escalated in recent weeks following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s warning that Japan could respond if Chinese military action against Taiwan posed a threat to Japan’s security.
During a meeting in Beijing on Monday with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, Wang Yi said that, as 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Japan—“as a defeated nation”—should behave with greater caution.
“Yet its current leader is trying to exploit the Taiwan issue—territory Japan colonised for half a century and where it committed countless crimes against the Chinese people—to stir up trouble and threaten China militarily. This is completely unacceptable,” Wang said, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
Taiwan was ruled by Japan from 1895 to 1945, before being handed over to the Republic of China after World War Two. The ROC later retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s communist forces.
Wang accused Japan’s leader of making “reckless remarks” about hypothetical Taiwan scenarios, insisting that Taiwan’s status as Chinese territory had been “unequivocally and irreversibly affirmed by ironclad historical and legal facts.”
Taiwan’s government strongly rejects Beijing’s territorial claims, arguing that the People’s Republic of China did not exist in 1945 and has never ruled Taiwan. Taiwan’s formal name remains the Republic of China.
Wang maintained that the PRC, as successor to the ROC, “naturally” inherits sovereignty over Taiwan.
When asked about China’s radar targeting of Japanese aircraft, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara reaffirmed Tokyo’s stance, saying: “The intermittent illumination of radar beams is a dangerous act that goes beyond what is safe and necessary.”
He declined to comment on reports claiming that Beijing did not respond to Japan’s calls on their bilateral military hotline—established in 2018—during the incident.
