Japan's foreign minister seeks "positive" direction in bilateral ties during his visit to China
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Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya met with top Chinese leaders Wednesday during his visit to Beijing, the first since the heads of the two countries met at a summit in Peru last month, in an effort to make positive inroads in the bilateral relationship.
The two neighbors have had a tense relationship in recent years. At the top of Iwaya's agenda is China’s ban on Japanese seafood in response to the release of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as well as China’s increasingly assertive military activity in the East and South China Seas.
Iwaya met with China's premier, Li Qiang Wednesday as well as Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart. "Currently the China-Japan relations are at a critical period of improvement and development,” said Li, in his remarks. “ China is willing to work together with Japan to move towards the important direction proposed by the leaders of the two countries.”.
"I want to build a relationship where the people of both countries feel that Japan-China relations have developed and progressed in a positive direction," said Iwaya, ahead of his meeting with Wang. His trip comes just before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is to take office in January.
Tokyo considers the Japan-U.S. alliance the lynchpin of its diplomatic and security policies, a tone emphasized in the past four years under U.S. President Joe Biden’s direction, but it’s unclear how Trump will impact the alliance. Japan has revamped its approach to defense i n response to Chinese actions in recent years, boosting military spending and shifting away from a principle of self-defense. Earlier this year, Japan protested when a Chinese military plane flew into Japan's airspace, while in the summer, a Chinese survey ship sailed into Japanese territorial waters.
