A rare moment of conciliation between China and Japan in their feud over disputed islands in the East China Sea arose on Thursday (Aug 11), after the Japan Coast Guard rescued a Chinese fishing boat that had collided with a Greece-flagged merchant ship near the islands.
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Another six crew members on board the fishing boat are still missing, Ifeng News reported.
China expressed its appreciation for the rescue efforts, the Japanese foreign ministry said in a statement.
The two countries are locked in a long-running dispute over the uninhabited islets known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.
Hundreds of Chinese boats are now fishing in waters close to the disputed islands, the ministry has said, with multiple Chinese patrol vessels maneuvering among them.
If China withdraws those vessels in response to protests from Japan, it will surely face criticism from the Chinese public.
It said up to 16 patrol ships have been in the area, distributing images of the ships and identifying them as hailing from three government agencies: China Coast Guard, China Marine Surveillance and China’s Fisheries Law Enforcement Command.
Tokyo has made eight formal protests to Beijing this week alone about repeated incursions by Chinese government vessels into waters that Japan claims as its own.
The Japanese coast guard unit, based in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, has been on high alert since it detected increased operations by Chinese government vessels and fishing boats in waters around the Senkakus on August 5. “We have not been able to determine the cause of the collision”, she said.
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“The situation surrounding the Japan-China relationship is markedly deteriorating”, he told Mr Cheng.
