East China Sea, Territorial Dispute | featured news

China reserves the right to take strong countermeasures if Japan "creates incidents" in the waters around a group of disputed uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, a Chinese vice foreign minister said on Friday.

Thousands of Chinese besieged the Japanese embassy in Beijing on Saturday, hurling rocks, eggs and bottles. Protests spread to other cities in a dispute over a group of remote islands.

Six Chinese maritime surveillance ships entered waters around a group of islands at the center of a heated territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing, ignoring warnings from the Japanese authorities.

Vast oil reserves, trillion-dollar trade routes, fervent nationalist sentiments, competing territorial claims and bitter histories – the waters off the east coast of China are a sea of money and a sea of trouble.

Japan on Friday sent home the first group of Chinese activists detained after landing on an island claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing, a move China welcomed but at the same time warned its neighbor against any further escalation in tension.