Japan, China planning Fumio Kishida-Xi Jinping meeting at G20 or Apec summit

Tokyo and Beijing were looking to arrange the meeting on the sidelines of the diplomatic gatherings in mid- November, the Sankei reported
Sino-Japanese ties have long been plagued with a dispute over a group of tiny uninhabited East China Sea islets and regional rivalry

Japan

Reuters

Published: 9:05am, 4 Nov 2022

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The Japanese and Chinese governments have started planning a meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and China’s President Xi Jinping for mid-November, the Sankei newspaper reported on Friday.

The governments were arranging the meeting to be held alongside an international conference set to take place in Southeast Asia around that time, the Sankei said, citing multiple government sources.

The latest in-person China-Japan summit was in 2019, when Xi met with then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing. Xi was set to visit Tokyo in 2020 as a state guest, but the trip was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a regular news conference that nothing has been decided on a summit meeting with China but that it is important to maintain dialogue at various levels.

“Through both governments’ endeavours, we aim to build constructive and stable ties with China, in which dialogue is firmly maintained and cooperation takes place on matters of common challenges,” Matsuno said.

Japan and China mark 50 years of formal ties amid deepening ‘trust deficit’

The Xi-Kishida meeting would be on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of 20 big economies in Indonesia’s Bali on November 15-16, or at a meeting between leaders of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) countries on November 18-19 in the Thai capital Bangkok, Sankei said.

Sino-Japanese ties have long been plagued with a dispute over a group of tiny uninhabited East China Sea islets, a legacy of Japan’s World War II aggression and regional rivalry.

Bilateral ties were strained further after China fired ballistic missiles into waters near Japan as part of a military exercise Beijing launched following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.

02:04

South Korea fires back after Pyongyang launches 23 ballistic missiles

Meanwhile, Kishida, US President Joe Biden and South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol are also planning to meet during the Asean-related gatherings in Cambodia or the G20 summit in response to rising tensions over North Korea, Kyodo reported.

If realised, it would be their first trilateral meeting since they met in June in Spain.

The plan emerged as North Korea ramps up ballistic missile launches with growing concerns that the country may conduct its seventh nuclear test.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Germany for the G7 ministerial meeting, met on Thursday and strongly condemned the series of missile tests, calling it an incontestable and serious challenge to the international community.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defence Minister Lee Jong-sup in a meeting at the Pentagon the same day agreed to further strengthen the bilateral alliance’s capabilities to deter and respond to North Korean threats.

Additional reporting by Kyodo