Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Relations between the Asian powers have been soured by Koizumi's visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.
The trips have prevented state visits by either leader to the other's country for the past three years.
Hu said "in very explicit terms that the crux of the problem is that Japanese government leaders pay homage to the Yasukuni Shrine," according to Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan (
The Japanese and Chinese leaders met after a two-day summit of APEC leaders in the Chilean capital of Santiago.
"He said that Japanese leaders should seek a proper solution to this matter by taking history as a mirror and looking into the future."
Hu particularly called on Koizumi to suspend his visit to the shrine next year "as we will have a sensitive year, which marks the 60th anniversary of the victory of anti-fascism."
Koizumi replied he would "sincerely" receive Hu's remarks but stopped short of mentioning any possibility of suspending his pilgrimage next year.
"I visit there in order to honor those who lost their lives against their will," Koizumi explained.
The heated debate on the war history extended the length of talks to over an hour from an originally scheduled 30 minutes.
China, occupied by Japan before and during World War II, has voiced outrage over Koizumi's regular pilgrimages to the shrine, which honors the Japanese war dead including convicted war criminals.
Japanese atrocities serve as nationalistic fodder in Chinese state propaganda. Japanese footballers were loudly booed and jeered in China this summer when they played and ultimately won the Asian Cup.
In a bid to turn the tables, Koizumi raised with Hu the matter of a Chinese nuclear submarine's intrusion into Japanese waters this month, which put a new strain on the Asian powers' relations.
"It is important to prevent any recurrence of such an incident in the future," Koizumi told Hu, according to a Japanese government official.
But Hu made no reply over the intrusion, which involved a two-day chase on the high seas near gas fields disputed between China and Japan in the East China Sea.
A Chinese spokesman, declining to elaborate, said: "The submarine issue was already appropriately resolved through the foreign ministries."
Japanese officials last week said China had apologized for the intrusion of the nuclear submarine, which Beijing blamed on a technical error. Japan is also irked by a Chinese sea-bed research project in what Tokyo considers its exclusive economic zone there.
"It is important for us to take apt measures on natural resource development," Koizumi said, adding that the two countries should not "turn the East China Sea to a conflicting sea."
A sense of political self-confidence and nationalism is growing in both countries despite close trade relations.
Japanese business leaders have pressed Koizumi to smooth over relations with China, to which Japan's exports surged 24.1 percent to ?3.8 trillion (US$37 billion) for the six months to June.
During the China-Japan summit, Hu and Koizumi at least agreed to urge North Korea to buckle on negotiations for an end to a crisis over its nuclear weapons program, often described as a major threat to Asian security.
"The issue should be solved peacefully though dialogue," Hu said, pledging to continue persuading North Korea to return to stalled multilateral talks over the crisis. Beijing has traditionally friendly ties with Pyongyang.
Three rounds of multilateral talks, seeking to urge North Korea to take aid and security guarantees in return for mothballing the nuclear program, have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002.
North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks in September.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS