Beijing, November 11 – China’s President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday held a first-ever meeting, termed by officials on both sides as an “icebreaker” aimed at turning the page after two years of tense relations over maritime disputes and questions of wartime history.
Xi briefly met Abe in Beijing ahead of the two-day APEC Summit that will be held here, marking the first significant official contact between the two leaders after they both took office.
The two sides hope the brief meeting will push ties, recently strained by maritime disputes, towards stability, even if deep-rooted differences over East China Sea islands and wartime history remain unresolved.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Abe said he believed “Japan and China took the first step toward improving our relationship as we go back to the principle of mutually beneficial strategic relations”.
The meeting, which only lasted half an hour, began with what reporters at the scene described as a tense handshake between the two leaders. Xi briefly kept Abe waiting in front of assembled media before he appeared. While Abe greeted the Chinese President, an expressionless Xi did not reply.
The Chinese government made clear that the meeting was held “at the request of the Japanese side”. Xi’s government had declined earlier calls from Japan for a summit-level meeting to express its displeasure with Abe’s government, which took office in 2012 standing on a nationalist platform.
Xi told Abe that he hoped Japan “continues to follow the path of peaceful development and adopt prudent military and security policies”. The Japanese Prime Minister was quoted as saying that he supported China’s hosting of the on-going APEC Summit, and that “China’s peaceful development is a significant opportunity for Japan and the world”.
Tensions between both countries have spiralled since 2012, when the Japanese government moved to nationalise East China Sea islands that are under Japanese control but claimed by Beijing, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
Japan, for its part, has expressed concern over what it says is increasing Chinese assertiveness and has struggled to come to terms with Beijing’s rising economic and military influence in Asia.
China set up an Air Defence Identification Zone over parts of the East China Sea to enforce its control, with increasing deployments of navy patrols and aircraft leading to frequent run-ins and fears of confrontations.
Ties have also been inflamed by questions of wartime history, with the lawmakers in the Abe administration angering China and South Korea by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which remembers Japan’s lives lost in the Second World War dead but also enshrines 14 class-A war criminals.
Abe’s pledge to rewrite the country’s World War-imposed Pacifist Constitution to allow Japan to have a normal military – rather than merely a restricted self-defence force – has further angered China, where the memories of Japanese wartime atrocities still stir passions.
The push towards thawing recently frozen ties comes amid a slump in trade, with China still requiring Japanese technology and investment and Abe’s government, facing economic challenges at home, keen to resume contact.
The meeting followed a “four point agreement” struck between the two countries’ foreign ministers in Beijing last week to resume political, diplomatic and security dialogue.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry, in Beijing for the APEC Summit, said the U.S. welcomed the agreement, but told reporters that it was just the first step. China’s official Xinhua news agency cautioned on Monday that the way forward to heal ties still remained difficult.
“If the Japanese leaders have no intention to undo the efforts of their predecessors to build a stable and healthy relationship with China, they need to take a fair and positive view of China’s rapid development and adjust its China policy with a strategic perspective,” a commentary said in a blunt message to Abe. “The ice trapping bilateral relations,” it added, “is too thick to melt in a day or two.”
-INDIA TODAY
