By Zachary Keck
To secure a meeting with Xi, Japanese PM Abe caved to China’s long-standing demand on the East China Sea dispute.
In order to secure a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe agreed to a significant concession in Tokyo’s ongoing dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands, according to Japanese media outlets.
As Shannon noted earlier today on China Power, Japanese officials now expect there to be a brief meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe during next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Beijing. The meeting would be the first between the two heads of state since they took their current positions. It comes after a prolonged Japanese charm offensive towards China, which resulted in extensive behind-the-scenes negotiations aimed at securing a heads of state meeting at APEC.
The meeting, which Japanese officials acknowledged would be more symbolic than substantive, did not come cheaply for Japan. Indeed, if Japanese media reports are accurate, Tokyo appears to have caved on the major issue that prevented a heads-of-state meeting to date.
On Thursday, Mainichi reported that Japan made a three-prong proposal to China in order to secure the meeting between the two heads of states next month. According to the report, which cited “Japanese government sources,” Japan proposed that during his meeting with Xi, Abe would first reassert that the Senkaku Islands are an inherent part of Japanese territory, but then “acknowledge that China has a case as well” to the islands. He would then propose that China and Japan seek to settle the issue through mutual dialogue over time. None of this would be included in a joint statement or any other documents officially released after the summit meeting.
Still, if the report is accurate, Abe’s acknowledgement that a territorial dispute exists and proposal to settle the issue through mutual dialogue represent huge concessions to long-standing Chinese demands.
Read the full story at The Diplomat