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Flight delays that have plagued China are expected to hit new extremes this week as the authorities announced that air traffic capacity would be reduced by as much as 75 percent on Tuesday in Shanghai. Several other eastern Chinese cities will also be affected.

The Civil Aviation Administration issued a red alert, the highest level in its system, for delays and cancellations at airports in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and more than a dozen other eastern cities from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

The recent air traffic snarls are believed to be the result of large-scale military drills, although Xinhua was cautious about listing the causes, saying the delays were due to “weather and many other reasons.” A spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense told Xinhua that the military was taking steps to limit the impact of the drills.



Still, the delays were expected to be widespread. The alert said that flights would not be able to land Tuesday afternoon at airports in the eastern cities of Linyi, Xuzhou, Lianyungang, Yancheng, Huaian, Changzhou, Yangzhou and Nantong. Likewise, flights will not be able to depart from airports in Nanchang, Ganzhou, Jiujiang, Yichun, Jinggangshan, Jingdezhen, Wuyishan, Luqiao and Wenzhou, the alert said.

The delays were expected to severely reduce the on-time performance of Chinese airports, which already have some of the world’s worst records. Beijing Capital International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport have the lowest ratings among 35 major international airports, according to figures published last year by the airline industry monitor FlightStats. Tales of passengers stuck in waiting halls or on the tarmac for hours are common.

As much as 80 percent of China’s airspace is controlled by the military, which has long been seen as the key factor in flight delays, although poor airline management has also been blamed. The People’s Liberation Army has announced plans for extensive drills around the Aug. 1 anniversary of its founding. Those drills include live-fire exercises from Tuesday to Saturday in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are engaged in a longstanding dispute over a group of islets administered by Japan, which calls them the Senkaku, but also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu.

Although the drills have been described by the civilian aviation authorities as a factor in the current air traffic snarl, the military has sought to play down its responsibility. In a statement posted to its website on Sunday, the Ministry of National Defense said the exercises “are not the main cause for the flight delays” and “the recent influence of weather is relatively large.”

A front-page commentary in the overseas edition of People’s Daily, the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, touted the importance of the drills. It noted that some exercises were being held in waters near the Diaoyu and around the 120th anniversary of the First Sino-Japanese War, when China suffered a humiliating defeat by its smaller neighbor.

“By carrying out this series of exercises, the Chinese military can make clear its resolve and will to defend China’s sovereignty, safety and territorial integrity and display its powerful defensive capabilities,” wrote Zhang Junshe of the P.L.A.’s Naval Research Institute. “This no doubt will have a deterrent force against any country illegally conspiring against China and will cause aggressors to shrink back.”