China and Japan Escalate Standoff Over Fishing Captain
What started nearly two weeks ago with the Japanese Coast Guard’s arrest of a Chinese trawler captain in disputed waters has snowballed into a heated diplomatic standoff between China and Japan, highlighting anxieties in
however Asia about China’s rising power and assertiveness.
The standoff over the arrest, which took place in waters near uninhabited islands claimed by both countries, escalated Sunday as China announced that it had suspended high-level exchanges with Japan, and threatened additional “strong countermeasures,” after Tokyo said it would extend its detention of the captain.
The captain, Zhan Qixiong, 41, was arrested on Sept. 8 after his fishing boat collided with two Japanese Coast Guard vessels near the islands.
The arrest, for obstructing officers on duty, quickly grew from a seemingly minor incident into a highly emotional issue in both countries, where it has become a top news item and has begun to spill over into other aspects of the two nations’ extensive economic and political ties.
Since the arrest, there have been mass cancellations of trips to Japan by Chinese tourists and protests in front of Japanese diplomatic missions and schools in China, as well as tensions over the possibility of drilling for natural gas in contested waters in the East China Sea.
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