A senior government official on Wednesday flatly denied allegations written on a news website claiming that a Chinese fighter was close to firing on an Air Self-Defense Force jet that had been scrambled over the East China Sea.

Koichi Hagiuda, deputy chief Cabinet secretary and a close aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, denied the claim made by Kunio Orita, former head of the Air Self-Defense Force's Air Support Command, on the Japan Business Press website.

According to Orita, the Chinese fighter made a threatening maneuver as if to attack the ASDF fighter. The Japanese pilot, he wrote, then left the area judging that staying could see the situation "develop into a dogfight and cause an unanticipated contingency," Orita wrote.