China Thursday reaffirmed sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea - and its "unswerving" determination to defend the country's lands.

The island and its adjacent islets "have been an integral part of China's territory since ancient times," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhang Qiyue told a regular news briefing.

"The determination of the Chinese Government and people to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity is unswerving."

She made the remark as activists hoping to plant the Chinese flag on the island were turned away Thursday by Japan's Coast Guard.

The Japanese used two patrol boats to sandwich the vessel carrying 10 activists from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan to prevent them from landing on the island.

A spokesman for the activists, Ku Kwai-yiu, said that the Japanese used eight boats to repeatedly ram the Chinese boat and damaged it. The activists finally turned around, said Ku, who was monitoring the situation from Hong Kong.

Japan Coast Guard spokesman, Kiyoshi Kawamura, had said earlier that his side was "determined to stop their landing by all means". In June, a boat carrying 15 activists from the mainland and Hong Kong tried to approach the islands but was turned back by the Japan Coast Guard.

After the confrontation Thursday, both sides agreed there had been no injuries.

The activists, who set out early Thursday from the port of Xiamen, in East China's Fujian Province, had said they might try to get to the islands by diving underwater.

They wanted to use their action to safeguard the "sacred sovereignty of the Chinese nation over the islands" and counter the brazen provocative acts by right-wing Japanese groups who used "numerous visits" to the island and its surrounding islets to claim sovereignty, the sohu.com website reported.

Japan claimed the Chinese island chain in 1895 after a war with China, then under the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) rule, and it tightly controls access to the area.

The latest move by Chinese activists to claim sovereignty over the islands drew widespread support and respect from netizens, who left tens of thousands of messages praising their "brave acts" and condemning the Japanese Coast Guard's interception of the Chinese boat.

Some demanded a stronger reaction from the Chinese Government.

"Each time when Chinese attempt to land on the island, they are blocked by Japanese gunboats and choppers," read one message on sohu website. "But as Japanese extremists set foot on the island, where are our gunboats and choppers?"

But Zhang Qiyue said that it has been Beijing's consistent position to solve the dispute between China and Japan over the island chain through consultation. "There has been no change of China's stance in this regard," she said.

Turning to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's expressed intent to revisit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Zhang said China hopes Japan can adopt an ethical view towards history.

The Yasukuni Shrine is seen as a symbol of Japan's militarism. Among those honored there are 14 people designated as Class A war criminals by the Allies in trials that followed World War II.

(China Daily October 10, 2003)