China Coast Guard patrols Diaoyu in ‘longest stay’

China on Thursday reacted strongly against a protest lodged by Japan over the China Coast Guard (CCG)'s patrol around waters of the Diaoyu Islands, which Tokyo said was the longest stay by Chinese vessels since Japan's "nationalization" of the islets last September.

According to a statement by the Chinese embassy in Japan, Han Zhiqiang, charge d'affaires at the embassy, met with Junichi Ihara, head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, in Tokyo on Thursday and made solemn representations and protests over Japanese right-wing activists' incursion into the Chinese territorial waters of the Diaoyu Islands.

China's State Oceanic Administration said Wednesday that a four-ship fleet from the CCG patrolled the territorial waters surrounding the Diaoyu Islands on the day.

The fleet spotted a Japanese ship sailing there and drove it away from China's territorial waters, it said. This is the first time Japanese vessels were warned away from the area since the CCG was formally unveiled last month.

Japan said Thursday it summoned Han after four Chinese ships were spotted in waters around the islands on Thursday morning, three of which have been there for over 28 hours.

The stay is "the longest" since Tokyo's "purchase" of the islets and is "extremely regrettable," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, according to the Kyodo News.

But Wang Shaopu, director of the Center of Japanese Studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global Times that it was Japan that changed the status quo of the Diaoyu Islands, jeopardizing regional peace and stability and hurting China-Japan relations.

"China Coast Guard ships' patrols of the areas are legal and reasonable. Japan has no right to level accusations against China," he said.

China and Japan reached a consensus to shelve the island disputes when they established diplomatic ties in the last century, but Japan chose to turn a blind eye to this historical fact, he noted.

Geng Xin, a deputy director of the Tokyo-based Japan-China Communication Institute, warned that bilateral relations will be tested again in the coming days as August 15 will mark the 68th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.

Two members of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet said Thursday they would not rule out the possibility of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15.

On Tuesday, the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan unveiled its biggest warship since World War II, a "quasi-aircraft carrier" that has the same name as the flagship of the Japanese fleet that invaded China in the 1930s.

Japan's Sankei Shimbun daily reported Tuesday the Japanese government is to officially recognize the use of the "rising-sun flag," the national flag used by imperialist Japan in World War II.

"The series of right wing moves are edging closer to the bottom lines of its Asian neighbors. Such actions seriously damage the environment of cooperation and peace in the area," Geng said.

Japan's unilateral move to "nationalize" the disputed islands and its attitude toward its militarist past have irked the Chinese public.

Escorted by three CCG ships, Zhai Mo, a 45-year-old mainland mariner, sailed to waters near the Diaoyu Islands last week, throwing 100 national flags into the sea, the Hong Kong-based The Standard paper reported.

Meanwhile, a group of Hong Kong activists who landed on the Diaoyu Islands last August are also planning to sail to the area to assert Chinese sovereignty again this year, but had to postpone their plan to reach the islands on August 15 due to failure to pass an inspection for their ship, reported the Ming Pao paper.