TOKYO - Japan’s government said on April 22 it was closely monitoring reports that a Chinese professor at a Japanese university has been missing since he took a trip home more than a year ago.

Professor Fan Yuntao, 61, “has been engaged in teaching at a university in Japan for a long time, and the matter could concern the professor’s human rights”, top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said.

“We are closely monitoring” the issue, he said when asked about reports in Japanese media – citing unnamed diplomatic sources – that Prof Fan had been unreachable since visiting China in February 2023.

The sources said Prof Fan was contacted by the Chinese authorities before he disappeared, Kyodo News reported. The Yomiuri daily said they may have questioned him.

Prof Fan’s employer, Asia University, told AFP he was “on leave” but declined to comment further, citing privacy issues.

Educated at Kyoto University, Prof Fan is a professor of international law and politics, the university’s website says.

The reports come just a month after Japan’s Kobe Gakuin University said the whereabouts in China of Hu Shiyun, a literature and linguistics professor, were also unknown.

Beijing has sharpened its focus on its nationals abroad in recent years.

In 2019, Professor Yuan Keqin of Japan’s Hokkaido University of Education vanished after travelling to China for a family funeral. China’s Foreign Ministry later said he had confessed to spying and was in custody.

And in 2013, Professor Zhu Jianrong of Tokyo’s Toyo Gakuen University, was detained by the Chinese authorities on suspicion of illegal intelligence gathering, also after vanishing on a trip home. AFP