Japanese media are reporting that an “unexpected obstruction” caused a Chinese military plane to breach Japan's airspace. The given reason for an incident that occured back in August comes just before the two side are set to meet in Peru on the sidelines of the APEC summit.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Riley, with APEC coming up in Peru, some people think that China's reasoning for this incursion
00:05when they breached Japan's airspace, it's kind of to play nice ahead of this meeting
00:10with Tokyo.
00:11What do you think?
00:12Do you think this really was an accident?
00:13Well, I think there's a few different ways to kind of understand their reasoning that
00:19it's an accident.
00:20The first, as you mentioned, with the upcoming APEC summit, it could be to play nice with
00:25the new Japanese administration.
00:29Beijing is still very diplomatic forward, so they like to at least try and make it seem
00:37like they're on a good foot with everyone.
00:40But the accident, it is hard to believe that the incursion in August was truly an accident.
00:47I think the fact is that there's just too much PLA activity going on.
00:51It doesn't really bring peace and security to the region.
00:55In fact, it does quite the opposite.
00:57And the Chinese really need to, I think, reconsider their priorities.
01:03And how would you gauge current relations between Japan and China right now?
01:07Are there any obstacles to both sides engaging with one another?
01:11I would say that Tokyo is getting a lot more skeptical of Beijing.
01:18Beijing itself is changing, of course.
01:20I mean, it's much more political.
01:22It's much more focused on security.
01:25It's much more pushing away a lot of the values that the international community has.
01:31And so Tokyo sees this, Tokyo sees the military activity going on right across their borders.
01:40And so they're very worried.
01:44The difficulty for leaders is that politics usually often means you have to play nice
01:51at these international conventions.
01:54It's not always that they can have a stern talking to in front of cameras, because that
01:58would just look bad for everyone.
01:59So it's a little bit difficult.
02:01I would say, though, just the underlying relationship between Tokyo and Beijing is growing, not
02:09more connected, but definitely more critical of the way that Beijing is acting.