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TOKYO (AFP) – Two Chinese vessels chased a Japanese fishing vessel near the disputed islands in the East China Sea, the Japan Coast Guard said Sunday.
Japan filed an official protest with China over the incident, which took place on Friday, through a call to the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo by Shigeki Takizaki, head of the Office of Asian and Oceanian Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. from Japan, local media reported.
There was also a call from the Japanese Embassy in Beijing to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the media said.
Contacted by AFP, the Japanese Foreign Ministry could not immediately confirm the reports.
The flash point islands, called Senkaku in Japan and known in China as Diaoyus, lie at the center of a rowdy row between Tokyo and Beijing.
The Japanese government has long complained about China’s routine dispatch of its coast guard ships to the waters surrounding the islands.
On Friday, the Japan Coast Guard ordered Chinese vessels to leave the waters and deployed several patrol boats to safeguard the fishing boat, whose three crew members were unharmed, a spokesman for the coast guard told AFP.
Two “Chinese boats prowling the islands are still within Japanese territorial waters,” he said Sunday, adding that “the fishing boat is not in a dangerous situation.”
Japan-China relations deteriorated in 2012 when Tokyo “nationalized” some of the disputed islets.
Since then, the two main Asian economies have taken gradual steps to repair the barriers, but relations are sometimes strained.
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