Japanese and Chinese officials are to hold senior-level security discussions next week for the first time since February 2019, Tokyo’s top diplomat said on Saturday.
Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi and Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi (王毅) held a meeting for nearly an hour on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The statement said the two officials discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major subject for this year’s summit, which is being held only a few days before the one-year anniversary of Moscow’s assault.
Photo: AFP
Hayashi “urged China to respond to the situation in Ukraine as a responsible major power,” it said.
He also condemned North Korea’s latest missile launch on Saturday, while calling on China “to make positive contributions to the international community under established international rules,” the statement added.
The two officials agreed to hold security and diplomatic talks next week, it said, without clarifying where the meeting would be held.
The last such meeting was held in November 2019 in Beijing.
Tokyo and Beijing have been at loggerheads for several years over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in the East China Sea — known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan — which Taiwan, Japan and China claim as their territory.
Relations soured between the two major Asian powers in 2012, when the Japanese government angered China by nationalizing some of the islands.
“Minister Hayashi again expressed serious concerns regarding the East China Sea including the situation surrounding the Senkaku Islands, as well as China’s increasingly active military activities near Japan including its coordination with Russia,” the statement said.
The upcoming security meeting would also be held in light of Japan’s recent accusations that it had observed Chinese surveillance balloons over its territory in previous years, after Washington shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.
Hayashi “clearly conveyed, once again, Japan’s position regarding the specific balloon-shaped flying objects that have been detected in Japan’s territorial airspace in the past,” the statement said.
“I said that if a balloon enters our country’s airspace without permission, it would be considered an intrusion no matter which country it came from,” Hayashi told reporters after the talks.
Japanese media had previously reported that government officials were weighing relaxing rules to allow shooting down aerial objects that enter Japan’s airspace illegally.
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