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As China, Japan and South Korea on Sunday failed to fix a date for upcoming trilateral foreign ministers' talks, analysts said hopes for a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye on the sidelines of the G20 still remain, although the prospects of a similar meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe look bleak.
Photo: File Photo
Liu Zhenmin, deputy Chinese foreign minister, met with Takeo Akiba and Kim Hyoung-zhin, his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, on Sunday in Tokyo to prepare for a foreign ministers' gathering.
But the three failed to reach a consensus on fixing the gathering envisioned for this week, Japan's Kyodo News Agency quoted Akiba as saying.
Tensions have flared up this year following Seoul's deployment of an advanced US missile shield system and Tokyo's involvement in South China Sea disputes.
The Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Photo: Reuters/Kyodo
The Sino-Japanese relationship has gone through rocky patches since they normalised ties in 1972, mainly over grievances dating back to the second world war and a territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, which Japan controls and calls the Senkakus.
But the relationship deteriorated markedly in 2012, when Japan announced it would purchase three of the disputed islands from a private landowner, triggering massive anti-Japanese protests in China. Since then, both nations have sent more vessels to waters around the disputed islands and conducted more naval drills. On one occasion they accused each other of locking onto their vessels with fire-control radar, raising fears of a major military conflict.
President Xi Jinping talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during their meeting on the sidelines of the Asian-African summit in Jakarta last year. Photo: Kyodo
Making matters worse, Beijing branded Abe an “unwelcome person” after his December 2013 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo that honours Japan’s war dead – including 14 Class A war criminals from the second world war. That made the chances of an improvement in bilateral ties even slimmer.
But neither side could afford a sharp escalation in tensions, given that annual bilateral trade is now worth more than US$300 billion, and the two leaders finally met in November 2014 on the sidelines of the Apec summit.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, walks past Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony Tuesday at the APEC summit in Beijing in 2014. Photo: Reuters
The Global Times reported that according to analysts, the Japanese and South Korean governments planned to use the trilateral foreign ministers meeting to help set up a meeting between their top leaders and Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit scheduled for September 4-5 in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province.
"It depends on the wisdom and minds of the superpowers, and the ongoing diplomatic exchanges and developments," Yang Bojiang, director of Japanese studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Natsuo Yamaguchi, the leader of Japan’s Komeito party, delivers a personal letter from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in January 2012. Photo: EPA
But he said he is more optimistic about China's relations with South Korea than with Japan, saying that China has no "structural conflicts" with South Korea.
The annual China-Japan-South Korea Foreign Ministers Meeting, which was resumed last year after a three-year suspension due to diplomatic rifts, is likely to be postponed this year.
Anti-Japan protesters march during a protest over the Diaoyu islands issue in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on September 18, 2012. Photo: AFP
The meeting, established in 2007, is part of a mechanism for the three East Asian countries to discuss issues including cooperation, leaders' meeting preparation and major regional and global issues.
Japan is this year's coordinator of the mechanism.
US role
The US has played a major role in the strained tensions between Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul, said Huang Dahui, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Renmin University of China.
"Believing that Chinese development will suppress its growth, the US adopted the rebalance to Asia-Pacific strategy. Instead of coming forward, it incites its allies and intensifies regional tensions," Huang told the Global Times.
Da Zhigang, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, agrees.
"The freezing of trilateral relations between China, Japan and South Korea is actually the US' strategic target," Da told the Global Times.
China originally planned to send assistant foreign minister Kong Xuanyou to Japan in mid-August to help prepare for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's meeting with his counterparts in Tokyo. But China suspended the visit at the last minute.
Quoting unidentified sources, the Asahi Shimbun reported that Tokyo's repeated protests against Chinese government vessels off the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea were one cause.
China started to send vessels to patrol the waters around the Diaoyu Islands in September 2012, in response to the Japanese government's "nationalization" of the islands. In the past month, China has conducted five patrols in the region, which sparked strong protests from Japan.
Sino-Japanese relations saw an improvement in 2014 when Abe met with Xi in Beijing during APEC.
Relations worsened again this year especially when Tokyo urged Beijing to adhere to the South China Sea arbitration ruling that was unilaterally initiated by the Philippines.
"Japan has assertively meddled in the dispute in the South China Sea, where it is neither a directly concerned party nor a country in the region," Yang said.
"This will become a new factor disturbing Sino-Japanese relations. Japan will not give up its attempts to stress maritime laws at bilateral or multi-party meetings and to besiege and contain China," Yang noted.
Timeline of modern Sino-Japanese relations
1945 – Japan renounces its territorial claims in China after the end of the second world war
1949 – Japan does not recognise the People’s Republic of China following the end of the civil war, maintaining diplomatic ties with the Nationalist government that fled to Taiwan
1972 – Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visits China and diplomatic relations between the two countries are normalised
1978 – Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping visits Japan and a Treaty of Peace and Friendship is signed
1979 – Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira pledges first government-to-government yen loan to China during visit
1982 – Premier Zhao Ziyang visits Japan and proposes the “three principles of Sino-Japanese relations”
1984 – The 21st Century Committee for Sino-Japan Friendship holds its first meeting
1985 – Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone visits the Yasukuni Shrine, angering China
1989 – Japan adopts sanctions against China after the Tiananmen Square crackdown
1991 – Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu becomes the first G7 leader to visit China since the Tiananmen Square crackdown
1992 – Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin visits Japan to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations
Emperor Akihito makes first Japanese imperial visit to China
1993 – Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa offers apology for Japan’s wartime aggression in speech to Japanese parliament
1995 – President Jiang Zemin visits Japan.
Japan cuts grant aid in response to China’s nuclear tests
1999 – Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi visits China and agrees to its accession to the World Trade Organisation
Liberal Democratic Party politician Yasutoshi Nishimura, right, a party aide to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaks to the media at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine on August 15 after delivering a ritual donation from Abe on the 71st anniversary of Japan's defeat in the second world war. Photo: AFP
2001 – Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes the first of six annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, angering Beijing
The two countries impose tariffs on each other’s imports
2003 – Poison gas shell discarded by the Japanese army during the second world war injures dozens of people in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province
2007 – Wen Jiabao becomes the first Chinese premier to address Japanese parliament
2005 – New edition of Japanese history textbook prompts protests from China and South Korea Japanese oil company receives government permission to exploit natural gas resources in the disputed areas in the East China Sea, angering Beijing
China opposes Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on UN Security Council.
2008 – President Hu Jintao calls for increased cooperation during the first visit to Japan by a Chinese head of state in more than a decade
2012 – Japan purchases three of the Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan, causing further deterioration of bilateral diplomatic relations
2013 – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits Yasukuni Shrine
(APD)
