A Chinese ship defied warnings from Japan's coast guard and conducted a marine survey in waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea yesterday.
The ship was spotted about 24km southwest of the craggy islets that lie between Okinawa and Taiwan in the East China Sea while conducting unreported surveys, violating a bilateral accord that requires advance notice, Coast Guard spokesman Takatoshi Nagasaki said.
The island chain, called Diaoyutais in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, is surrounded by rich fishing grounds and is regularly visited by nationalists from both sides.
The ship did not violate Japan's territorial waters but stayed within the Japanese 200 nautical mile (370km) exclusive economic zone -- the waters where a country has rights to explore and use marine resources under international law, Nagasaki said.
The Coast Guard said it asked the Foreign Ministry to lodge a protest and urge Beijing to immediately stop the survey.
Diplomatic relations between Japan and China have already been strained by a dispute over gas and oil deposits in another part of the East China Sea. China claims it has rights to the deposits, but Tokyo says the two countries should share them.
In Beijing, a duty officer with the Chinese Foreign Ministry's press department said they would look into the matter but had no immediate comment.
The Dongfanghong No. 2 ignored repeated radio warnings by a Japanese coast guard ship and continued to collect undersea mud and water samples, Nagasaki said. He said the vessel later moved northward but did not exit the disputed waters.
Japan claimed the islands in 1895 when it colonized Taiwan. The US controlled the islets after World War II and returned them to Japan in 1972.
Both Taiwan and China also claim the islets.
RSS