China and Japan to resume dialogue
8 Nov TOI
China and Japan reached agreement to ramp up high-level contacts, the
strongest indication yet of a possible meeting between Chinese President
Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at next week's
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
The Chinese and Japanese foreign ministries said the two sides agreed
to ''gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues.”
China froze high-level contacts more than two years ago amid a dispute
over uninhabited East China Sea islands and other contentious issues.
No meeting has been announced, though Xi and Abe are widely expected
to at least hold some kind of tete-a-tete during the summit Monday and
Tuesday.
It's unclear what form that meeting would take or whether anything
substantial would be discussed. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said
a meeting between the two leaders had not been finalized, but an
environment for talks had been achieved.”
Until now the door was closed, unfortunately, but this agreement has
achieved a momentum,” he said on BS Fuji television.”I believe everyone
wants us to put an end to tensions between Japan and China,” Abe said.
“It would be extremely significant for us to show the rest of the world
our efforts to fulfill our responsibilities for the region's peace and
prosperity.”
In a statement on its website, China's Foreign Ministry said the
sides acknowledged their “different positions” on the islands, called
Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan.
That implied a degree of compromise on both sides. Japan has refused
China's demand to acknowledge that the islands’ sovereignty is in
dispute, but Friday's announcement indicated that Tokyo was at least
willing to concede that different views exist. China, for its part,
appeared to have compromised on demands for a resumption of dialogue.The
announcement followed a meeting in Beijing between Chinese Vice Premier
Yang Jiechi, the government's senior foreign policy adviser, and Abe's
special envoy, National Security Adviser Shotaro Yachi, who was
dispatched to Beijing on Thursday.
According to the foreign ministry statement, the sides agreed to hold
dialogue and consultation to prevent the island dispute from further
deteriorating and to establish crisis management mechanisms to avoid
contingencies.Japan's foreign ministry issued an identical statement in
Japanese.
Top White House official on Asian affairs, Evan Medeiros, said the
U.S. very warmly welcomed the agreement by Japan and China to improve
relations, particularly on crisis management.
He told reporters in Washington that a stable relationship between
the two largest economies in East Asia was essential to regional peace
and prosperity.
China was incensed by Japan's move to nationalize the islands in
2012, sparking violent anti-Japanese protests and prompting the
government to send patrol boats into waters surrounding the islands to
confront Japanese coast guard vessels. |