Expectations are high in Tokyo that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold an ice-breaking chat in Beijing this week but, with little hope of a major breakthrough, attention has focused on format.
A one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific leaders summit would signal a thaw in ties between the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, which have chilled in the past two years over a territorial row, regional rivalry and the bitter legacy of Japan’s wartime occupation of China.
Abe has not had a substantive exchange with Xi since the Japanese leader took office in December 2012, although the two shook hands at a G20 summit in Russia in September 2013.
“Regardless of the format, it is extremely important that the leaders of Japan and China meet and speak frankly,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters after Abe’s national security adviser, Shotaro Yachi, visited Beijing to meet China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.
Regardless of the format, it is extremely important that the leaders of Japan and China meet and speak frankly
In the absence of substance, Japanese media have focused on format – whether Abe and Xi would sit or stand for the meeting.
The Nikkei business daily quoted Japanese officials as saying it would be more than a stand-up chat, while the mass circulation Yomiuri newspaper said nothing had been settled.
The fact the two sides were debating the format days before the Asia-Pacific leaders summit for today and tomorrow probably means substance will be in short supply, experts said.
“If they are now discussing whether to sit or stand, it means relations are not very good,” said Andrew Horvat, a visiting professor at Josai International University in Tokyo.
He said a sit-down chat would at least suggest the possibility of substantive discussions.
Beijing wants assurances Abe will not repeat his December 2013 visit to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine for war dead, which is seen in Beijing as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, although such a promise would be hard for the conservative Abe to make.
China has its domestic audience to consider, too.
“It would be a big loss of face for China if Xi were to agree to a meeting and then Abe goes again to the shrine,” said one Western envoy in Beijing who follows China-Japan ties. China also wants Japan to acknowledge the existence of a formal territorial dispute over tiny islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan but also claimed by Beijing.
Diplomats have been seeking a formula to “agree to disagree” about the isles, tensions over which have raised concerns about an unintended clash. Some Japanese media have said Abe might at least acknowledge that China takes a different view.
“That’s the high-hanging fruit ... but it’s a long reach,” said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University’s Japan campus.