Beijing warns citizens against visiting ahead of Lunar New Year holiday as airlines extend deadline for refunds or flight changes.

CNBC's China reporter Elaine Yu chats with Squawk Box Asia anchors Martin Soong and Chery Kang about the so-called "panda diplomacy", as Japan is due to return two pandas to China amid rising tensions.

BEIJING, Jan 26 (Reuters) - China on Monday warned its citizens against travelling to Japan during the Lunar New Year, its longest public holiday, as Beijing's anger over a comment Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made in early November about democratically governed Taiwan showed no signs of abating.

China warned its citizens on Monday against travelling to Japan during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, citing deteriorating public security, with Tokyo and Beijing locked in a diplomatic spat.

Data from flight information platform Flight Master showed that as of Monday, 49 China-Japan routes had cancelled all flights scheduled for February, an increase from this month. In January, the cancellation rate for flights from Chinese mainland to Japan stood at 47.2 percent, up 7.8 percentage points from December.

Japan’s diplomatic mission in the southwestern Chinese megacity of Chongqing has been left without a consul-general, as relations between Tokyo and Beijing remain strained.

The number of Chinese visitors to Japan plummeted by 45% last month from a year earlier, to around 330,000, as a result of the spat.

The number of Chinese visitors to Japan plummeted by 45 per cent last month from a year earlier, to around 330,000.

Japan underlined their dominance in Asian youth football with a commanding victory over China in the U23 Asian Cup final, defending their continental title and becoming the first team to win the tournament three times.