Diaoyu incident 'could harm ties'

China urges Japan to free captain; sends ship to protect fishermen

BEIJING - China warned Japan on Thursday that their relationship could suffer if Tokyo mishandled the dispute over a Chinese fishing boat seized by the Japanese coast guard in waters off China's Diaoyu Islands.

"The Diaoyu Islands are China's inseparable territory, and Japan applying its domestic law to the Chinese fishing boat operating in this area is absurd, illegal and invalid," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news conference. "China will never accept that," she stressed.