A Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fighter jet flew dangerously close to a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force reconnaissance plane over the Indo-Pacific in June 2025, triggering a demand from Tokyo to Beijing for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to cease its bullying.
The near miss came after the PLAN jet took off from the aircraft carrier Shandong, chased the Japanese patrol plane for 40 minutes and flew within 45 meters of the aircraft. A day later, a CCP jet flew in front of a Japanese P-3C patrol aircraft about 900 meters away, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.
“Such abnormal approaches by Chinese military aircraft have the potential to induce accidental collisions. We expressed serious concern and demanded the prevention of recurrence,” the Defense Ministry stated.
“A [Japan] Self-Defense Forces pilot wouldn’t conduct those maneuvers,” a senior ministry official said, according to The Japan Times newspaper.
Japan had increased its air patrol vigilance after two PLAN aircraft carriers, the Shandong and the Liaoning, operated simultaneously in the Western Pacific near Japan in early June. The Shandong sailed 550 kilometers southeast of Miyako Island in the southern prefecture of Okinawa and two days later conducted fighter jet and helicopter takeoff and landing drills north of Japan’s southernmost Okinotori Island within Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), the Defense Ministry said.
The Liaoning and seven other warships sailed about 300 kilometers southwest of the easternmost island of Minamitori in Japan’s EEZ before conducting similar takeoff and landing drills outside the EEZ.
The CCP’s belligerence mirrors its coercion of the self-governed island of Taiwan — which Beijing threatens to annex by force — and the Philippines, which won an international arbitration case in 2016 that invalidated China’s expansive sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.
The most recent CCP bullying likely sought to demonstrate PLAN capabilities and determine how Japan would respond, analysts said. “China’s intent could not be clearer: Beijing is signaling its growing capability and readiness to press its will on regional governments,” The Japan Times said in an editorial. “This demands a more robust defense posture and doctrine that counters the PLA and deters Chinese aggression, whether conventional or through the use of hybrid tactics that Beijing has used to rewrite the regional status quo.”
CCP fighters routinely fly dangerously close to other nations’ aircraft. In 2023, a United States Air Force reconnaissance plane narrowly avoided a collision when a CCP fighter performed an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” over the South China Sea. The U.S. said in late 2023 that it had documented more than 180 instances of coercive and dangerous behavior by PLA pilots since 2021. There were nearly 300 such incidents against U.S., allied and partner aircraft over the two-year period, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Also in 2023, a Canadian surveillance plane was monitoring the East China Sea for suspected violators of the United Nations oil embargo on North Korea when a PLA jet came within 5 meters and launched flares. In May 2024, a Royal Australian Navy pilot was forced to take evasive action when a PLA jet detonated flares in its flight path, endangering the aircraft and its crew, Australia’s Defence Department said.
