Chinese authorities have detained an employee of Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc, with the government in Tokyo urging Beijing to release the man.
The company is working with the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to gather more information, a spokesman for Astellas said.
Details on why the worker was detained remain unknown. Japan has urged China to release the man and requested a consular visit, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said in a briefing yesterday.
Photo: AP
More than a dozen Japanese nationals have been detained in China since 2015, Kyodo News and other Japanese media reported.
Eight of those have returned to Japan, seven remain in China facing trial or serving time, and one has died, the Mainichi Shimbun reported last month.
Five of them have been found guilty by China of endangering national security, the paper said.
The Astellas employee, in his 50s, has worked in China for more than 20 years and was planning to return at the end of this month, the Fuji News Network reported.
He was detained for contravening a local law, reports said.
In 2020, a Japanese man was released from detention in China after completing a five-year prison sentence.
The man moved to North Korea and defected in the 1960s, later returning to Japan, before being detained in China near the North Korean border in 2015, Kyodo News said.
In 2021, an employee of a trading house Itochu Corp was released after serving three years in a Chinese jail for espionage, the Asahi Shimbun said.
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