China Sends Patrol Ships to Guard East China Sea Territory

China's largest patrol ship will guard its waters in the East China Sea, where a group of uninhabited islands also claimed by Japan and Taiwan is located.

The 3,000-ton Haijian 50, which can accommodate helicopters, was dispatched from Shanghai port Tuesday by the East China Sea fleet of China Marine Surveillance, a paramilitary maritime law enforcement agency.

The vessel will visit the Diaoyu Islands, Rixiang Rock, Suyan Rock, China's offshore oil and gas fields of Chunxiao and Pinghu, as well as joint Chinese-Japanese development zones, said Liu Zhendong, head of the fleet, according to Xinhua.

The Haijian 50 will patrol the area together with the Haijian 66, a 1,350-ton ship that left Xiamen in Fujian province also on Tuesday.

The islands being disputed by China, Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea are called the Diaoyu by the Chinese and Senkaku by the Japanese. The islands are located east of mainland China, northeast of Taiwan, west of Okinawa, and north of the southwestern end of Japan's Ryukyu Islands.

The submerged Rixiang and Suyan rocks are also being claimed by South Korea, which calls them Ieodo and Parangdo. The Korean Ieodo Ocean Research Station, which has a helipad, stands on the Parangdo rock.

South Korea's 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone overlaps with China's in the East China Sea. In 2003, China protested the construction of the ocean science base on Ieodo Island.