Japan has deployed fighter jets and summoned Chinese embassy officials after a Chinese Y-9 spy plane breached the country's airspace on Monday.
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00:00Japan has deployed fighter jets after a Chinese military aircraft breached its airspace, the
00:05first time China's made such a move.
00:07Our reporter Jaime Ocon is live in Taipei with the latest.
00:11So Jaime, what happened?
00:12What do we know so far?
00:14Well, Japan says that a Chinese Huainai reconnaissance plane breached its airspace near the Taung
00:20Chau Islands.
00:21That's near southwestern Japan.
00:23Now this would be the first confirmed instance of China violating Japan's airspace.
00:28Tokyo says it scrambled its own fighter jets and has summoned officials from the Chinese
00:32embassy to explain what happened.
00:34Now that aircraft that I talked about, the Huainai, that's a military reconnaissance
00:38aircraft that's used to gather intelligence and to pretty much spy on what other countries
00:43are doing militarily.
00:45That kind of aircraft usually operates in Japan's ADIZ or Taiwan's ADIZ.
00:50That stands for Air Defense Identification Zone.
00:53Now to be very clear, those ADIZs, those are military buffer zones, much different
00:58than territorial airspace.
01:00So Monday's instance of China breaching Japan's actual airspace, that's a pretty big deal.
01:06Two years ago here in Taiwan, there was concerns about what would happen if a Chinese military
01:12aircraft breached Taiwan's ADIZ and then went further and breached territorial airspace.
01:17The defense minister at that time said that that would be considered an act of war, a
01:20strike and Taiwan could shoot down that aircraft.
01:25And Jaime, do we know why China was doing this?
01:28Could we be seeing more of this kind of action in the future?
01:31Well, we haven't heard any official statement from the Chinese side, but observers in Japan
01:36say that this could have been a test to see how quick Japan can react and scramble its
01:40own fighter jets.
01:41That Huainai, that aircraft that I talked about, it breached Japan's airspace for about
01:45two minutes.
01:46So it was a very quick in and out.
01:48And to your second question, absolutely.
01:50I mean, people believe that given how complex and how congested the airspace is in this
01:55region, there are bound to see more instances of this in the future.
01:58Just taking a look at the map, Taiwan's ADIZ, China's, Japan, and even South Korea's all
02:04overlap.
02:05And China has been increasing the amount of military activity in this region.
02:09Last year, Japan had to scramble more than 500 times to warn off Chinese aircraft in
02:14its ADIZ.
02:15And so far this year, Taiwan has reported more than 1,700 Chinese military aircraft
02:21in the region.
02:22Both of those numbers are record highs.
02:24So with this latest case, many analysts say that China is just going to keep up ramping
02:28up that military activity and those exercises across the region to see how countries in
02:33this area react.