By Shannon Tiezzi
China and Japan are one step closer to setting up a consultative mechanism to govern contacts in the East China Sea.
On Monday, Chinese and Japanese defense authorities sat down to discuss how to manage tensions stemming from a territorial dispute in the East China Sea. Both sides are trying to finalize details of a hotline that will allow leaders from both sides to communicate in the event of an emergency, as well as other strategies for avoiding accidents at sea or in the air. Setting up a maritime consultative mechanism is seen as a crucial step in managing tensions arising from the Senkaku/Diaoyu territorial dispute.
A general agreement to hammer out a maritime consultative mechanism was reached in 2012 – just before China-Japan relations took a nosedive over the Japanese nationalization of the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands. The first round of talks, held in May 2012, was also the last for over two years. With talks suspended, many worried that heightened tensions and increased patrols in the disputed region could lead to a disastrous accident – exactly the sort of scenario a consultative mechanism is designed to prevent.
The second round of talks took place in Qingdao, Shandong province, on September 23 and 24 of last year. That meeting, 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, provided an early sign that a thaw in China-Japan relations was on the horizon. During that meeting, China and Japan agreed in principle to resume liaisons between their maritime departments, with the goal of putting in place a maritime communication mechanism as early as possible.
Read the full story at The Diplomat