China dispatches jets to monitor Japanese planes

China sent out two J-10 fighters on Saturday to watch two Japanese F-15s in airspace over the East China Sea that, in turn, were following a Chinese patrol plane, Bloomberg reported, citing a statement posted by the Ministry of Defense online on Sunday. The Chinese patrol aircraft was keeping watch over the oil and gas fields off the coast near Wenzhou, while the Chinese jets trailed a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft in the same area, the ministry said. The development comes amid a territorial conflict between the two countries over the Senkaku islands, known by the Chinese as the Diaoyu islands, in the East China Sea. “The resentment toward each other has come to the highest level since World War II,” said China’s state-owned Global Times in a Sunday editorial.