TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s coast guard has dispatched a patrol vessel to rescue an injured crewmember of a Chinese survey ship in the contested waters in southwestern Japan, officials said Friday.
The Chinese survey ship Ke Xue requested the rescue by the Japan Coast Guard on Wednesday, saying that one of the crewmembers suffered a hand injury during the survey operation in the area off the southern coast of Miyako Island, according to the JCG.
The JCG patrol vessel picked up the crewmember, a Chinese national in his 40s, from the survey ship and transported him to Naha on the main Okinawa island for hospital treatment.
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 JCG patrol aircraft warned the survey ship to move out of the waters, and the Japanese government lodged a protest to the Chinese side.
