Why is China’s Liaoning carrier on a unique route amid Beijing-Tokyo tensions?

The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning has charted an unusual course towards Japan’s home islands following the mid-air stand-off between Chinese and Japanese fighter jets near Okinawa on the weekend, as tensions between Beijing and Tokyo continue to rise.\nThe PLA Navy carrier and three guided missile destroyers travelled northeast from their position near the Miyako Strait where the stand-off occurred, heading towards waters off Kyushu and the eastern side of Japan that faces the west Pacific Ocean.\nAs of late Sunday, the Liaoning carrier strike group was around 190km (118 miles) east of Kikai Island, according to a map provided by Japan’s defence ministry.\nChinese warships typically sail southeast through the Miyako Strait before entering the high seas of the Pacific, east of the first island chain that runs along East Asia’s coastline and includes the Japanese archipelago.\n\n\n\n\nThe Liaoning’s reported position on Sunday shows the strike group has taken a different route, an unusual move that underscores the escalating pressure Beijing is placing on Tokyo following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in November.\nTakaichi has refused to retract her controversial remarks on Taiwan, which crossed Beijing’s red line.\nMeanwhile, one of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force’s largest warships, the aircraft carrier JS Kaga, left its homeport of Kure on Monday and is sailing southwest through the Seto Inland Sea towards waters east of Kyushu.\nAccording to ship tracking information, the Kaga’s current route could potentially intersect with the Liaoning strike group if both vessels maintained their current directions.\nThe USS George Washington strike group is also operating in the region, departing Guam earlier this week bound for Yokosuka. As of Sunday, ship tracking data placed the carrier south of the Kii Peninsula, east of Kyushu.\n\n\nBefore the Liaoning made its 90-degree turn on Saturday and sailed northeast, its ship-based J-15 fighters locked fire-control radars on Japan’s F-15 jets – scrambled from nearby bases to monitor the Chinese fleet – in two separate incidents, Tokyo said.\nThis marked the first time that Chinese military aircraft have been publicly known to point radar at Japanese defence force planes.\nJapan’s air and maritime forces frequently conduct shadowing and monitoring of PLA aircraft and warships in the region to visually identify and photograph them, scrambling 464 times in financial year 2024 and 479 times the year before.\nWhile these interceptions occasionally resulted in minor frictions – such as multiple “dangerously close” approaches or a brief airspace violation by a PLA Y-9 spy plane in August 2024 – they have never escalated into a radar lock-on.\nLocking a fire-control radar onto a target is a tactical precursor to launching a missile. In aviation, this action is viewed as a high-level warning or a pre-combat signal, essentially one step short of opening fire.\nJapan’s defence ministry said the first instance of intermittent radar illumination occurred at 4.32pm and lasted for three minutes, while the second targeted a different F-15 two hours later at 6.37pm and persisted intermittently for more than 31 minutes.\nIf the account is accurate, more than half an hour is an exceptionally long time for a radar lock and means the Chinese pilot had to actively manoeuvre with the Japanese jet to maintain it. Typically, a warning illumination lasts several seconds.\n\n\nJapanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi on Sunday said that the Chinese fighters’ actions were a “dangerous act” beyond the scope of safe flight operations.\nPLA Navy spokesman Wang Xuemeng said Japan’s claim was “completely inconsistent with the facts”, while Zhang Xiaogang, from the Chinese Ministry of National Defence, accused Japan of making “false accusations against China’s normal and lawful operations”.\nWang and Zhang accused the Japanese fighters of intruding into the Liaoning’s pre-announced exercise zones, and “repeatedly engaging in hostile surveillance and disruptive manoeuvres”. They did not provide a detailed Chinese account of the alleged incidents.\nBeijing also said it had announced in advance the training areas for the carrier group, but Koizumi denied the claim. “We have not confirmed any prior notification on the training activities through a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) or a navigational warning,” he told lawmakers on Tuesday.\nIn January 2013, when China-Japan relations were strained over the Japanese nationalisation of the disputed Diaoyu Islands – known as Senkaku Islands in Japan – a Chinese frigate directed a fire-control radar at a Japanese destroyer.\nAnd in June 2017, Japanese fighter jets locked on Chinese warplanes, according to previous reports.\n\n\n\n\nMore than two years ago, the PLA’s Shandong aircraft carrier strike group was spotted operating in waters around 330km (205 miles) south of Yonaguni – Japan’s southernmost island only 110km (68.4 miles) from Taiwan.\nThe deployment was part of the PLA’s massive “Joint Sword” drills around Taiwan in April 2023 that included simulated precision strikes against key targets on and around the self-ruled island.\nBeijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US and its treaty ally Japan, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. But Washington and Tokyo are opposed to any use of force to change the status quo.\nThe latest rapid deterioration in China-Japan relations comes after Takaichi told the Japanese parliament on November 7 that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could justify military intervention, which Beijing said crossed a red line.\n