In April, all flights on 30 China-Japan routes were cancelled, data from Chinese industry information provider Flight Master showed on Friday.

In April, the number of flights from Chinese mainland to Japan totaled 2,554, a decrease of 182 flights compared with March. This represents a 54.4 percent decline from 2025 year-on-year, with the rate of decline widening by 4.3 percentage points from March, the platform told the Global Times.

It added that among the top 20 international and regional routes by flight volume during the May Day holiday, round-trip flights between China and South Korea ranked first, with a year-on-year increase of 9.4 percent. In contrast, round-trip flights between China and Japan declined 56.7 percent year-on-year.

The total volume of China-Japan flights continued to operate at a low level. According to the Flight Master, a total of 2,691 flights from the Chinese mainland to Japan were canceled in March, with the cancellation rate reaching 49.6 percent, up 1.1 percentage points from February.

The number of visitors to Japan from the Chinese mainland plunged 55.9 percent year-on-year in March to 291,600, marking a continued downward trend that is weighing on multiple sectors of the Japanese economy, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Also, in the first quarter of this year, arrivals from the Chinese mainland to Japan dropped 54.6 percent year-on-year, according to Xinhua.

On Thursday, responding to a question by Asahi Shimbun claiming that exchanges between Japan and China have been dwindling and asking whether the Chinese side hopes to see people-to-people exchange between the two countries restored, Lin Jian, spokesperson from China's Foreign Ministry, told a press conference that the root cause of the serious difficulties in bilateral relations lies in Prime Minister of Japan Sanae Takaichi's erroneous remarks on Taiwan. The responsibility rests solely with the Japanese side.

"If the Japanese side truly hopes to improve relations with China, it should abide by the four political documents between the two countries and the commitments it made to China, retract its erroneous remarks, safeguard the political foundation for bilateral relations with concrete actions, and create necessary conditions for normal exchanges with China," Lin noted.