By Shannon Tiezzi
After a break of over 2 years, China and Japan restart maritime consultations, including talks on East China Sea issues.
China and Japan have re-started high-level talks on maritime issues, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced in a press release on Wednesday. The talks took place in the Chinese port city of Qingdao on September 23 and 24.
This week’s talks were led by Yi Xianliang, the deputy director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs and Makita Shimokawa, deputy director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau. The talks also involved officials from China and Japan’s defense ministries, foreign ministries, maritime affairs bureaus, and energy bureaus. The first round of these high-level maritime talks took place in May 2012; that also marked the last such discussion until this week’s meeting in Qingdao.
China-Japan relations took a sharp nosedive toward the end of 2012 when the Japanese government purchased several of the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from a private owner. Tokyo insisted it had done so only to prevent a more inflammatory alternative — nationalist Tokyo Mayor Shintaro Ishihara had promised to buy the islands and begin construction on them. Beijing did not accept this explanation and accused Japan of escalating the territorial dispute by nationalizing the islands. Fall 2012 marked the beginning of sharply increased Chinese patrols, both by sea and by air, near the disputed islands.
China-Japan relations deteriorated even further under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His December 2013 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war dead are enshrined, enraged Beijing. Since then, China has called for Japan to show sincere remorse for World War II atrocities. Abe’s moves to loosen restrictions on Japan’s Self Defense Forces have also caused concern in China that Tokyo is returning to a militaristic path. Meanwhile, Tokyo denounced China’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone over the East China Sea in November 2013 and argues that increased Chinese aggression makes it necessary for Japan to up its defense readiness.
Read the full story at The Diplomat