Senior diplomats from Japan and China are arranging to hold talks Thursday to discuss suspected gas field explorations by Beijing in a contested area of the East China Sea, diplomatic sources said Saturday. Japan will lodge a protest against the development work and repeated intrusions by Chinese ships into Japanese waters around the Japan-controlled, China-claimed Senkaku Islands, the sources said. At the first virtual meeting at the director-general level since last November, Japan will be represented by Takehiro Funakoshi, head of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau at the Foreign Ministr...
