(Reuters) – China called on Japan on Thursday to stop sending jets up against Chinese aircraft after Japan said it had scrambled its fighters twice as often in the past year amid a territorial dispute.
The number of scrambles against Chinese planes nearly doubled to 306 in the year that ended in March. That accounted for the increase in the overall number from 425 to 567, the highest level in 22 years, Japan’s Defense Ministry said.
China and Japan have been involved in an increasingly acrimonious stand-off over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
“We all know that when it comes to the Diaoyu Islands issue Japan has been continuously taking provocative actions to raise tensions. This is the root cause of the present very tense situation over the islands,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing.
