China and Japan agree to move on maritime dialogue and military hotline days after Xi Jinping and Fumio Kishida meet

Name: Japan’s foreign minister to visit China after leaders Fumio Kishida and Xi Jinping meet at Apec
Uploaded: 2022-11-23T11:05:15.000Z
Duration: 1 min 43 s
Description: Japan’s foreign minister to visit China after leaders Fumio Kishida and Xi Jinping meet at Apec

Chinese and Japanese officials pledged to ‘earnestly implement’ agreement reached by the two countries’ leaders at their meeting on Apec sidelines

Virtual meeting addressed maritime and territorial disputes and agreed to cooperate on a defence hotline and joint action on cross-border crime

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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands at the start of their meeting, on the sidelines of the Apec forum on Thursday November 17, in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Kyodo

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 7:05pm, 23 Nov 2022

Beijing and Tokyo have agreed to deepen their maritime dialogue, manage differences over Taiwan and their territorial disputes and open a military hotline, all in a diplomatic consultation just days after leaders of the Asian rivals met for the first time in three years.

China’s President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Bangkok last week and agreed to ease their increasingly adversarial tensions in the midst of the US-China rivalry and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Led by two foreign ministries, Chinese and Japanese officials had an “extensive and in-depth” exchange of views on their maritime rifts and pledged to “earnestly implement” the agreement reached by Xi and Kishida last week to build “stable and constructive” ties, according to a statement from Beijing.

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Japan’s foreign minister to visit China after leaders Fumio Kishida and Xi Jinping meet at Apec

The latest department-level meeting of a bilateral mechanism on maritime affairs, held virtually on Tuesday, involved seven other government agencies from both sides, including defence ministries, coastguards and agencies responsible for the marine environment and energy.

China’s Central Foreign Affairs Office and Japan’s Cabinet Secretariat were also involved in the consultation, which has been held almost annually since 2012.

The Chinese side, led by Hong Liang, head of the foreign ministry’s department of boundary and ocean affairs, urged Japan to “stop all actions that violate China’s sovereignty” surrounding the disputed Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan.

Chinese officials also voiced “strong dissatisfaction with Japan’s recent negative remarks and erroneous practices” over Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a runaway province that needs to be reunited, by force if necessary.

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