Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono’s first visit to China this Sunday to strengthen bilateral ties between Japan and China was fruitful as many sensitive topics were discussed and attempts to find a midway were made.
“We want to improve overall (bilateral) ties this year,” Kono, the first Japanese foreign minister to visit China in about two years, said at the outset of the meeting open to the media according to Japan Times.
Taro Kono invited Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during their talks in Beijing to visit Japan as soon as possible to participate in a trilateral summit including South Korea that Tokyo wanted to host last year. Li Keqiang is said to have replied in a positive manner.The summit would bring Li to Japan for the first time since he took office in 2013.
The relations between Japan and China has been strained as Japan refuses to acknowledge its wartime past to the contentment of the Chinese. However, this has been the 50th year anniversary to the signing of the peace treaty between the two countries.
Although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping have yet to make official visits to their respective countries, this has been due, in part, to the dispute over the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea known in China as the Diaoyu Islands. The tiny isles are administered by Tokyo, but are also claimed by Beijing and Taipei who call them by the name- Tiaoyutai.
Tokyo and Beijing have locked horns over the Senkakus for years. The dispute became savage after the government led by then-Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, decided to effectively put them under state control in September 2012.
An number of policymakers and scholars from Japan and China believe the renewed political stability in both the countries which form the second and third largest economies of the world will create a better environment to promote practical cooperation.