China-Japan Flight Cancellations Near 2,700 as Taiwan Dispute Deepens Travel Slump

Half the Flights Lost, With Another Holiday Approaching

China and Japan lost 2,691 scheduled flights in March 2026 as a diplomatic dispute over Taiwan continued to disrupt travel between the two countries. Aviation intelligence firm OAG recorded just 2,711 flights operating that month, compared with 5,512 in March 2025. The cancellation rate was about 49 per cent, nearly half of planned services, and rose by 1.1 percentage points from February.

Japan also received far fewer Chinese tourists. The Japan National Tourist Organisation recorded 291,600 Chinese arrivals in March, a decline of 55.9 per cent from a year earlier. Chinese visitors had been Japan's largest source of international tourists and accounted for nearly 30 per cent of tourist spending. During the third quarter of 2025, their spending contributed more than $1 billion a month to Japan's economy.

As of April 23, the disruption showed no sign of easing before China's Labour Day holiday from May 1 to 5. About 45 per cent of planned flights from China to Japan during that holiday period had already been cancelled, including 210 services scheduled for the peak travel window.

The reductions have become the most severe interruption to travel between China and Japan since the COVID-19 pandemic. A dispute that began with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks about a possible conflict over Taiwan has spread through airlines, travel agencies, shops, cultural events and diplomatic exchanges. For businesses that depend on Chinese visitors, the approaching holiday now offers far fewer opportunities to recover lost bookings.

The November Remarks Behind the Dispute

Takaichi set off the confrontation during parliamentary proceedings on November 7, 2025. She suggested Japan could deploy military forces during a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, describing a potential Chinese attack on the democratically governed island as a life-threatening situation for Japan that could trigger collective self-defence measures.

Collective self-defence, in the security doctrine discussed here, concerns circumstances in which Japan could use military force in response to a conflict involving another party because Japan's own survival was threatened. Takaichi's comments explicitly connected a Taiwan conflict with that possibility.

Beijing reacted within days. On November 14, China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued an advisory urging citizens to avoid visiting Japan, citing significant risks to Chinese nationals. The advisory said the security environment for Chinese citizens in Japan had continued to deteriorate and referred to isolated assaults. Japan nevertheless remained one of the world's safest travel destinations, with crime rates lower than those of most major tourism hubs.

Chinese travellers cancelled approximately 500,000 flight tickets to Japan within three days of the advisory, equivalent to roughly 32 per cent of bookings to the destination. Independent aviation analyst Li Hanming, who had tracked travel between China and Japan since 2023, described cancellations outnumbering new bookings by an extraordinary margin.

The flight-ticket cancellations were 27 times that of new bookings, which shows safety concerns are the dominating factor for travel.

Li said he had not seen cancellations on that scale since the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The sudden withdrawal of bookings gave airlines and travel companies an immediate reason to reduce their Japan operations.

How the Cuts Spread Through the Calendar

Flight reductions continued in successive waves after the November warning. December brought more than 1,900 cancellations, affecting over 40 per cent of scheduled services. In January, the cancellation rate reached 47.2 per cent, an increase of 7.8 percentage points from the previous month.

Flight Master, a travel data platform, recorded the cancellation of every scheduled flight on 49 routes between China and Japan in February. Those cancellations affected 38 airports across the two countries, showing how the disruption extended beyond the largest international gateways.

The main dates trace the widening interruption to travel:

• November 7, 2025: Takaichi linked a possible Taiwan conflict to circumstances that could trigger Japanese collective self-defence.
• November 14, 2025: China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism urged citizens to avoid Japan.
• Within three days of the advisory: Approximately 500,000 tickets to Japan were cancelled, about 32 per cent of bookings.
• December 2025: More than 1,900 flights were cancelled, representing over 40 per cent of scheduled services.
• January 2026: The cancellation rate reached 47.2 per cent.
• February 2026: All scheduled flights on 49 routes were cancelled, affecting 38 airports.
• March 2026: OAG recorded 2,691 cancellations and 2,711 flights operating.
• May 1 to 5, 2026: About 45 per cent of planned holiday flights from China to Japan had been cancelled by April 23.

March's 2,711 operating flights amounted to about half the 5,512 services recorded a year earlier. The loss of connections reduced both the number of seats available and the range of direct routes travellers could choose.

May and June Schedules Point to Further Reductions

OAG listed only 2,643 flights between China and Japan for May 2026, a decline of 55 per cent from the same month in 2025. June's schedule showed 2,376 flights, compared with 5,598 a year earlier. Those figures describe scheduled services ahead of the travel dates, while March's figures record flights that actually operated.

Beijing, Dalian, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai were among the Chinese airports most affected. In Japan, popular destinations including Osaka, Nagoya and Sapporo saw their connections reduced.

Routes from smaller Chinese cities, including Shenyang, Chongqing and Wuhan, to Japanese tourism centres were hit particularly hard. Some regional connections built over years were effectively severed, narrowing access for travellers who had previously been able to fly directly to their destinations.

The Labour Day holiday normally provides a concentrated period of demand for overseas travel. With 210 services already cancelled during May 1 to 5 and a much smaller schedule for the month, Japanese tourism businesses faced a reduced flow of visitors during another major Chinese holiday.

Chinese Airlines Lead the Retreat

Chinese carriers have driven almost all the service reductions, while Japanese airlines have maintained their frequency. John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, linked that uneven response to the political dispute.

It's primarily a Chinese airline thing, which by extension is a political move,

Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines extended their cancellation and rescheduling periods for flights involving Japan until October 2026. Sichuan Airlines cancelled all flights between Chengdu and Sapporo from January through late March.

At least seven Chinese carriers, including the three major airlines owned by the state, offered free cancellations and full refunds for flights to Japan booked until December 31, 2025. Spring Airlines, a budget carrier, suspended several Japan services, citing company planning reasons.

The share of affected flights among airlines based in mainland China rose to 82.14 per cent on the Sunday after the initial advisory. It remained at 75.6 per cent the following day. The rapid response across multiple carriers turned the travel warning into an immediate change in flight availability.

Travel Agencies Lose Bookings and Withdraw Tours

Ctrip and Caissa suspended group tours to Japan. A large tourism company owned by the state removed all Japan travel options from its mobile application, while a travel agency in Beijing stopped accepting Japan bookings entirely.

Some operators also stopped processing individual visa applications for Chinese travellers going to Japan. Others continued running tours in the hope that the interruption would be temporary. Travellers therefore encountered changes at several stages of a trip, from finding a package and arranging a visa to retaining a flight booking.

Yu Jinxin, vice president of East Japan International Travel Service, said her company lost 80 per cent of its bookings for the remainder of 2025 within days of the advisory. She described the immediate damage to the business.

This is a huge loss for us,

Yu said the company had survived earlier diplomatic disputes, including the 2012 confrontation over the Senkaku Islands. Her concern was how long the latest interruption would continue.

If this lasts for one or two months, we can manage, but if the situation continues to worsen, it will obviously have a major impact on our business.

Small and medium businesses in Kyoto and Hokkaido that specialise in serving Chinese package groups were especially exposed. Their dependence on a particular stream of visitors left them vulnerable when agencies withdrew tours and airlines removed direct connections.

The Economic Cost Reaches Beyond Tourism

Japanese tourism stocks fell after China's travel warning. Cosmetics companies, department stores, airlines and sportswear businesses also faced selling by investors concerned about the loss of Chinese spending.

Nomura Research Institute estimated that a sustained absence of Chinese visitors could cost Japan approximately 2.2 trillion yen, or $14.23 billion, over a year. Its projection represented a reduction of roughly 0.36 per cent in gross domestic product, the measure of economic production, and assumed that the boycott continued throughout 2026.

The estimate covered a possible annual economic loss under that scenario. By April, continued flight cuts and firm diplomatic positions had made a prolonged disruption an increasingly plausible prospect.

Chinese visitors' share of spending helps explain the exposure. They accounted for nearly 30 per cent of spending by international tourists, and their monthly contribution exceeded $1 billion during the third quarter of 2025. March's 55.9 per cent fall in arrivals therefore affected a market that had supplied substantial revenue across several industries.

Japan's tourism operators began seeking more visitors from Southeast Asia. Replacing lost Chinese business, however, required a shift in the customers they served while flight capacity and group bookings from China continued to shrink.

Seafood, Films and Performances Become Part of the Dispute

China's response extended beyond travel. Beijing reinstated an import ban on Japanese seafood, officially citing concerns about the safety of water released from Fukushima. The timing was widely understood as connecting the restriction to the diplomatic confrontation.

Japanese singers Hamasaki Ayumi and Otsuki Maki had concerts in China cancelled. Film distributors indefinitely postponed screenings of at least two Japanese movies, reducing cultural activity alongside the commercial restrictions.

Box office receipts for the Japanese animated film Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, which had already been released, also slumped. Chinese audience dissatisfaction with Takaichi's Taiwan remarks was cited as the reason.

The annual Japan-China survey was cancelled at Beijing's request. The Chinese polling partner said the results did not represent the current state of relations between China and Japan and held no practical relevance or reference value.

Cancelled performances, delayed films and suspended exchanges narrowed opportunities for people in the two countries to encounter each other's culture. Losing those contacts weakened social ties and made hostile narratives easier to reproduce.

Education was another area potentially exposed to a prolonged dispute. Approximately 120,000 Chinese students formed the largest part of Japan's international student population. Their presence made educational exchange another substantial connection between the countries that could be affected if tensions persisted.

Military Encounters Add to Diplomatic Strain

Military activity compounded the confrontation in December 2025. Chinese J-15 fighter jets operating from the aircraft carrier Liaoning twice locked their fire control radars onto Japanese aircraft, prompting emergency takeoffs from Okinawa.

A fire control radar helps an aircraft direct its weapons at a target. The reported radar locks were therefore treated as threatening manoeuvres, adding a security dimension to a dispute already disrupting civilian travel and trade.

Two Russian Tu-95 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons subsequently joined two Chinese H-6 bombers for a joint flight off the southern coast of the Japanese archipelago. The aircraft entered South Korea's air defence identification zone, an area where aircraft identification is monitored for security.

South Korea avoided taking sides while balancing its economic dependence on China with its security alliance with the United States. Southeast Asian countries largely maintained their One China policies and called for regional stability.

The United States expressed support for Japan over China's coercive economic measures. President Donald Trump also reportedly sought to limit escalation through meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Takaichi, adopting a cautious tone to avoid damaging economic negotiations.

Chinese Holiday Travel Shifts Elsewhere

Chinese travellers redirected spending toward other destinations rather than simply abandoning overseas holidays. Flight data showed brisk traffic between China and South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong during the Lunar New Year period and ahead of Labour Day.

Those destinations benefited from demand that Japan was losing. The contrast placed the disruption in sharper focus: international holiday travel from China continued, while services to Japan were being reduced.

Japanese businesses consequently faced competition from destinations receiving more Chinese visitors at the same time that they sought new customers in Southeast Asia. Airlines, agencies and tourism operators were adjusting to a shift in where people travelled and where their spending landed.

Talks Have Not Broken the Impasse

Tokyo sent senior foreign ministry official Masaaki Kanai to Beijing in November 2025 for talks with his Chinese counterpart, Liu Jinsong. Business leaders also pressed for a response that would protect commercial relations.

Yoshinobu Tsutsui, head of Japan's Keidanren business lobby, urged Takaichi to reconsider her position. Speaking to reporters, he connected stable political relations with the ability of businesses to trade and operate.

Political stability is a prerequisite for economic exchange,

Takaichi refused to withdraw her remarks. Beijing continued to demand their withdrawal as a condition for normalising relations. Japan maintained that its official One China policy was unchanged and that the comments reflected existing security doctrine.

Beijing viewed the explicit connection between Taiwan's security and Japan's survival as a dangerous departure from strategic ambiguity. That term describes leaving some possible responses unstated, rather than publicly specifying how a government might act in a particular conflict.

China regards its sovereignty claim over Taiwan as indisputable and central to its account of national rejuvenation. Japan increasingly sees a potential Taiwan conflict as a matter of national security because of the island's location along critical maritime trade routes.

Those competing positions explain why the dispute reaches beyond a single travel advisory. Even if the warning is eventually lifted, the disagreement over Taiwan and Japan's security could continue to shape relations. As of April 23, no resolution date had been given, while the May 1 to 5 holiday and reduced schedules for May and June marked the next immediate tests for travel businesses.

The Bottom Line

• OAG recorded 2,691 flight cancellations in March 2026, about 49 per cent of planned services between China and Japan.
• Only 2,711 flights operated in March, compared with 5,512 in March 2025.
• Chinese arrivals in Japan fell 55.9 per cent to 291,600 in March.
• The dispute began with Takaichi's November 7 remarks about Taiwan, followed by China's November 14 travel advisory.
• Chinese airlines led the service cuts, while Japanese carriers maintained their frequency.
• About 45 per cent of planned flights from China to Japan during the May 1 to 5 holiday had been cancelled, including 210 services.
• Nomura Research Institute estimated a possible annual economic loss of 2.2 trillion yen, or $14.23 billion, if the boycott continued throughout 2026.
• Seafood restrictions, cancelled performances, postponed films and military encounters widened the confrontation.
• Beijing continued to demand withdrawal of Takaichi's remarks, while Japan maintained that its policy and security doctrine were unchanged.