Japan's trial of boat captain will harm relations: China

Officials also were 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 has 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 collect the fishermen.

China's state media warned Thursday 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 English-language China Daily said in an editorial.

Japan's largest newspaper, Yomiuri, defended the captain's arrest as “legitimate,” adding that “China's territorial claim is clearly unreasonable.” It said Beijing began asserting its territorial claims over the islands only after the area became known as rich ground for undersea resources in the 1970s.

This isn't the first territorial dispute between the countries. Last month, a Chinese survey ship allegedly entered Japan's disputed exclusive economic zone without prior notification, breaking a previous agreement between the two countries. In April, a Chinese helicopter came within 300 feet (90 meters) of a Japanese military monitoring vessel in the vicinity of a Chinese naval exercise.

The latest crash occurred after the Chinese ship refused to stop for an inspection by the patrol vessels after repeatedly ignoring their earlier warnings to leave the area, the coast guard said.

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