UpdateChina 'seriously concerned' after Japan PM sends offering to Yasukuni Shrine
More than 100 Japanese lawmakers visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine on Friday and the prime minister sent an offering in moves likely to anger Beijing and Seoul
China’s foreign ministry expressed serious concern on Friday after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.
"China is seriously concerned about and resolutely opposed to the negative tendencies which have appeared in Japan regarding the Yasukuni Shrine," the ministry said in a statement.
Abe's move risked complicating his push for a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping to improve frayed ties between the world’s second- and third-biggest economies.
A group of other Japanese lawmakers paid their respects at the shrine – seen by critics at home and abroad as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism – on Friday, the start of the country’s autumn festival, a witness said.
There was no sign of cabinet ministers at the shrine, although NHK public television said Health Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki also sent an offering. A ruling party lawmaker tweeted that three ministers planned to visit on Saturday.
Expectations have been growing in Japan that Abe, who outraged Beijing and Seoul by visiting Yasukuni in person in December last year, will be able to meet Xi for ice-breaking talks next month at an Asia-Pacific leaders summit in Beijing.