Amid diplomatic tensions between the two countries, Beijing referred to the travel alert recently issued by the Foreign Ministry following statements by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
“Last week, we observed that Japanese police had just arrested five suspects for attacking Chinese citizens, and there were a large number of extreme and threatening comments against China on the Japanese internet.
Furthermore, the Chinese Embassy and consulate in Japan had recently been repeatedly harassed by Japanese right-wing extremists both in person and online,” spokesperson Mao Ning said.
In this context, the number of Chinese passengers traveling to Japan fell significantly, according to data from travel platforms and airlines.
According to a report by The Paper, the load factor on flights to Japan fell 12,3 percentage points compared to the previous week, while passenger volume decreased by 10,8% during the same period.
According to the TravelSky platform, the number of flights canceled from mainland China to Japan between November 24 and December 31 has increased by approximately 56% compared to the same period last month.
This increase was further exacerbated by special measures implemented by airlines such as Air China, China Eastern, and China Southern Airlines to facilitate refunds or changes to tickets.
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