TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to pursue constructive and stable ties at a meeting on Friday that may ease fears she would adopt a more combative approach toward Beijing.
The confirmation of the hardline conservative as Japan’s first female prime minister last week raised concerns that relations between the Asian neighbours could deteriorate. One of her first decisions was to accelerate a defence buildup meant to deter China’s military ambitions in the region.
“We reaffirmed the broad principle of building a strategic and mutually beneficial relationship between Japan and China,” Takaichi said after the meeting on the sidelines of the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.
“I conveyed my concerns, but also raised areas where we can cooperate. I would like this meeting to serve as a starting point for Japan and China,” she added.
At the start of the meeting Xi said he was ready to maintain communication with Takaichi to keep bilateral ties on the right track, Chinese state media reported.
Before taking office, Takaichi was a regular visitor to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, regarded by China as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
She has also suggested Japan could form a “quasi-security alliance” with Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by China, and said that any contingency there would constitute an emergency for Japan and its ally, the U.S.
China views the decades-old U.S.-Japan alliance as detrimental to interests and has urged Takaichi to improve ties between the two Asian neighbours.
At the meeting, Takaichi said she had “spoken frankly” with Xi about several pending issues, including Beijing’s export controls on rare earths.
But her agenda largely mirrored that of her predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba. It included concerns over Chinese activity in the East China Sea, the safety of Japanese nationals in China, stability in the Taiwan Strait, ending curbs on Japanese seafood and beef imports and the protection of human rights for Uyghurs and people in Hong Kong.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly and Kiyoshi Takenaka, Editing by William Maclean and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
