Japan will damage its relations with China if it decides to prosecute the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with Japanese patrol vessels near disputed islands, Beijing warned yesterday.
The Chinese government also said it was sending a law enforcement ship to the islands in the East China Sea — though it was unclear if the vessel would simply collect fishermen stranded after the collision or patrol the waters.
Territorial disputes have been a disruptive undercurrent in China's relations with its Asian neighbors in recent years. As the robust Chinese economy’s demand for resources grows, Beijing’s commercial ships are venturing farther from shore and its more powerful navy is enforcing claims in disputed waters.
The likelihood of a trial increased yesterday as the Japanese coast guard handed over 41-year-old captain Zhan Qixiong (詹其雄) to prosecutors for further investigation to decide whether to officially charge him in the case, Japanese Coast Guard spokesman Masahiro Ichijo said.
No one was injured in the collision, and the two Japanese vessels sustained minor damage.
Beijing has reacted to the arrest with swift criticism, twice summoning the Japanese ambassador in Beijing and demanding the Chinese vessel be released immediately.
“The Japanese side applying domestic law to the Chinese fishing boat operating in this area is absurd, illegal and invalid,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) said at a regular news conference.
She said the territorial disputes were highly sensitive and improper handling would seriously affect the “larger interests of China-Japan relations.”
The collisions happened off the northwestern coast of Japan's Kuba Island, just north of the disputed islands known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyutai (釣魚台) in Chinese. The islands, about 190km east of Taiwan, are controlled by Japan but are also claimed by China and Taiwan.
Japan's coast guard said the captain could be released in a couple of days if he acknowledged the allegation of obstructing public duties resulting in the collision and paid a fine. If not, he would likely have to stand trial.
Officials were also questioning the ship's remaining 14 crew members, who have remained on the fishing boat, the coast guard said.
The crew cannot land in Japan because they do not have passports, but are free to return to China if the Chinese send a vessel to pick them up, it said.
Jiang said Beijing had sent “a fishery law enforcement ship” to the disputed area “to safeguard order in the relevant fishing area and protect the safety of fishermen and their assets.”
She declined to say whether the ship would pick up the fishermen.
China's state media warned yesterday of setbacks to relations if Japan does not release Zhan.
“A wave of indignation is also brewing in Chinese society, which might snowball in a major public outcry if the Japanese authorities continue to take a hardline stance on the incident,” the China Daily said in an editorial.
Japan's largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, defended the captain's arrest as “legitimate,” adding that “China's territorial claim is clearly unreasonable.”
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS