Li Keqiang and Shinzo Abe shake hands despite latest war shrine visit
Premier's first meeting with Japanese PM ahead of a key summit next month comes after Yasukuni gift draws sharp rebuke from Beijing
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shook hands with Premier Li Keqiang in Milan yesterday, despite a mass visit by Japanese lawmakers to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo.
The brief greeting and exchange of pleasantries, reported by Japanese press citing an official travelling with Abe, was the first time the two men have met, and comes as Japan continues to press for a summit with President Xi Jinping next month.
It is the latest sign of a gathering thaw in relations that have been in the deep freeze for two years, since Tokyo and Beijing fell out over the ownership of disputed islands and their differing interpretations of history.
The meeting took place despite anger in Beijing over an offering made in Abe's name at the Yasukuni Shrine - reviled by China and South Korea as a symbol of Japan's militarist past - and as a cross-party group of 110 lawmakers paid homage there.
The visit was made to mark the start of the shrine's four-day autumn festival. Abe, who sent a small masakaki tree with his name and title displayed, is thought unlikely to go even after he returns home today from the Asia-Europe summit in Italy.
"China reiterates that only by Japan earnestly and squarely facing, deeply reflecting upon its history of invasion and clearly distancing itself from militarism, can China-Japan relations realise healthy and stable development," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.