Japan adviser flies to China for last-minute talks on proposed Xi-Abe meeting at Apec
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s key foreign-policy adviser arrived on Thursday in Beijing for last-minute coordination with Chinese officials over the format of dialogue between their top leaders on the margins of a regional economic summit next week.
Shotaro Yachi will hold talks with State Councillor Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference in Tokyo.
Amid the growing likelihood that Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping will make brief informal contact during the two-day summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum starting Monday in Beijing, Yachi is likely to convey the prime minister’s request for an official meeting without attaching preconditions.
The Chinese leadership has insisted Xi will not hold a formal meeting with Abe unless the prime minister recognises the existence of a “territorial dispute” over the Japan-controlled, China-claimed Senkaku Islands and promises not to visit again the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
“Nothing has been decided at this point,” Suga said when asked what kind of contact Abe and Xi may have in Beijing. “It’s extremely important for the leaders of the world’s second- and third-largest economies to talk frankly no matter how they meet.”
In late July when former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda had a secret meeting with Xi in Beijing, Fukuda was accompanied by Yachi, a seasoned diplomat who now serves as head of the National Security Secretariat.
Abe, since taking office in December 2012, has not had an official meeting with Xi as relations between the two countries have been at their lowest ebb in decades due to disputes over territorial and wartime historical issues.
Meanwhile, senior officials from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) region have agreed to launch a “strategic study” on a trade pact backed by Beijing and the deal remains at the “top of the agenda”, the forum’s top official said Thursday.
The study on the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) concept will last around two years, said Alan Bollard, Apec’s executive director.
The de, he said, dismissing suggestions that slow progress on it was a blow to Beijing, but he added: “This is not an opening of negotiations.”
The study will have to be approved by ministers and heads of government at the Leaders’ Week meeting in Beijing, said Bollard, a former head of New Zealand’s central bank.
The notion of a far-reaching trade pact such as FTAAP, first raised in 2006 by APEC leaders, has increasingly been pushed by China.
But it faces competition from a narrower Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) plan championed by Washington, which does not include China.
A separate Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) plan has also been promoted by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Apec had “no tradition of legal negotiations”, Bollard said.
“The whole process through the year has been about understanding what FTAAP might mean, how it might get there, how long it might take, and how it might fit in with these other under-negotiation trade agreements,” he said.
Some Chinese analysts have viewed Washington’s TPP proposal with scepticism, arguing that the plan is intended as a way to thwart FTAAP and thus counter Beijing’s growing influence in the region, concerns Washington has dismissed.
Ministerial meetings at the forum begin on Friday, and the full summit on Monday and Tuesday will see leaders of more than half the world¡¦s economy gather in Beijing.
Among the other initiatives to be discussed include a connectivity blueprint and a statement on anti-corruption.
