By Cao Qun and Bao Yinan
The air forces of China and Russia have recently conducted their 11th joint strategic air patrol in the airspace over the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, and the Western Pacific, demonstrating their determination and capability to jointly maintain regional peace and stability. The joint patrol and exercise strictly complied with international law and never violated any country's airspace. However, Japan has made a fuss about it. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets to track and monitor the Chinese and Russian aircraft formations, and Japan's Ministry of Defense also expressed so-called "serious concerns" to both countries through diplomatic channels.
During each joint air patrol, Chinese and Russian aircraft entered the Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ) unilaterally designated by relevant countries. However, all these activities took place in international airspace and never violated the airspace of other countries, which is entirely in accordance with international law.
However, since Sanae Takaichi took office, the Japanese side has reacted abnormally fiercely to the joint patrols conducted by China and Russia in December 2025 and this June. Recently, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi even claimed that this patrol was a "demonstration action against Japan" and accused China and Russia of "continuously expanding the scope and increasing the frequency" of their patrols. In fact, the frequency of China-Russia joint strategic air patrols has decreased from twice a year in 2022-2024 to once a year. Koizumi's statement disregarded the facts.
The China-Russia joint strategic air patrol is a normalized cooperative drill between the two militaries. However, Western countries such as the US and Japan frequently hype up such activities as "threats" to the surrounding areas, laying bare their double standards. The real purpose of Japan's double-standard hype is to fabricate a false narrative of "Japan being coerced by China" to push for neo-militarism and accelerate remilitarization by exaggerating its security crises.
China advocates the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security, with the building of a security community as its long-term goal. It pursues a new path to security that features dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance, and win-win results over zero-sum games. However, in recent years, Japan has continuously strengthened bilateral and multilateral military cooperation featuring zero-sum game thinking, which undermined the security and development environment in the Asia-Pacific region. In the long run, this will inevitably lead to camp-based division in the region and escalate confrontation among countries. Compared with the US and Japan, which are elevating the risk of conflict in Northeast Asia by strengthening "alliance deterrence," the joint air and sea exercises of the Chinese and Russian militaries in the region aim to maintain international and regional peace and stability and jointly respond to maritime security threats. Moreover, both the frequency and scale of these exercises are much lower than those of Japan's bilateral and multilateral military and security cooperation with other countries.
Japan's recent sensational moves, essentially motivated by its needs for domestic politics, diplomacy, and military expansion, are an attempt to deliberately create security anxiety. The joint military exercises by Chinese and Russian aircraft are not directed at any third party. Japan's hype that the patrols pose a "security threat" is clearly a pretext. Its real intention is to create more excuses for building offensive military forces, with the ambition of eventually breaking free from the constraints of the pacifist Constitution and reverting to the old path of military expansion.
At present, China-Japan relations are in serious difficulty, and the responsibility lies entirely with the Japanese side. Where China-Japan relations will go in the future also depends on the choice of the Japanese side. Japan should abide by the one-China principle and the spirit of the four political documents between China and Japan, stop inciting and creating camp confrontation, and take concrete actions to eliminate the serious obstacles it has created. Only in this way can China-Japan relations get out of the predicament and return to the right track.
Editor's note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.