Chinese Ship Asks Japan's Help

Japan's coast guard dispatched a patrol vessel to rescue an injured crew member of a Chinese survey ship in the contested waters in southwestern Japan, officials said Friday. The Chinese survey ship Ke Xue requested the rescue on Wednesday, saying that one of the crew members suffered a hand injury during the survey operation off the southern coast of Miyako Island, according to the coast guard. The patrol vessel picked up the crew member, a Chinese national in his 40s, from the survey ship and transported him to Naha on the main Okinawa island for hospital treatment, the AP reports.

The Ke Xue is one of a number of Chinese survey vessels that operate in waters in the East China Sea, where China has increasingly stepped up maritime activity and routinely sends survey vessels, coast guard ships, as well as warships and aircraft, often violating Japanese territorial waters and airspace. Japanese officials said that on Monday, another Chinese survey ship lowered a wire into the sea known as the Japanese exclusive economic zone—an area where Japan claims rights to conduct economic activity—east of Japan's southernmost island of Okinotorishima, without permission from the Japanese government. The coast guard patrol aircraft warned the survey ship to move out of the waters, and the Japanese government lodged a protest with the Chinese side.

(More East China Sea stories.)