Japan and China held security talks yesterday after a four-year hiatus because of simmering territorial tensions, in a meeting expected to touch on the flashpoint issue of maritime crisis management, officials and reports said.
The first such dialogue between the two Asian rivals since January 2011 was held at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo, a government official said, in the latest sign of a hastening thaw in once-frozen relations.
The talks involved top officials from each nation’s foreign and defense ministries, including Japanese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Shinsuke Sugiyama and Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Jianchao (劉建超).
Photo: AFP
Tokyo and Beijing are at loggerheads over the sovereignty of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, which Japan administers as the Senkakus, but which Taiwan and China claim as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
Relations soured in 2012 when the Japanese government angered China by nationalizing three of the five islands and Beijing had since refused most high-level talks with Tokyo, as ships and planes from both sides regularly sparred in the East China Sea.
Some observers had warned that the regular presence of military or paramilitary vessels from two of the region’s biggest powers risked sliding into conflict through error or a wayward local commander, but the two sides broke the ice in November last year when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) exchanged a frosty handshake on the sidelines of an APEC forum.
“Our country sees [the dialogue] as important as it is expected to improve mutual trust between Japan and China in the field of security,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. “Through this dialogue, we want to foster a sense of trust between the two countries by exchanging views frankly and honestly on security policies, defense policies and the regional situation.”
Liu told the meeting that Beijing hoped to develop ties with Tokyo in the spirit of “taking history as a mirror and looking forward to the future,” Xinhua news agency said.
The comment reflects Beijing’s persistent theme of Japan’s need to face up to its actions in World War II.
Japan was expected to ask China to go ahead with stalled plans to launch a maritime crisis-management mechanism as soon as possible, Jiji Press said.
Tokyo is also expected to ask Beijing to make its growing defense spending more transparent and explain the reasons behind its military expansion, it said.
Beijing was likely to want to talk about moves by Abe to relax restrictions on the Japanese military to allow it to come to the aid of allies under attack, it added.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS