Sober Bilateral Meeting

Taking opportunity of attending Group 20 Summit meeting in Hangzhou, China, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had a meeting with Chinese President, Xi Jinping, on Monday. That was the third meeting, since Abe took office in late 2012, following the last one in April 2015. In an unusual situation that Chinese vessels unilaterally reiterate intrusion in Japanese territory around Senkaku Islands, both leaders shared a notion of keeping communication to avoid accidental collision.

At the opening dialogue of thirty-minute meeting, Xi insisted on necessity of stable relationship between the two nations. “It will meet mutual interest and regional peace and stability for both nations to achieve long-term, healthy and stable development. We need to make effort to remove obstacles and reset our bilateral relationship on a normal orbit for progress,” told Xi.

Abe stressed his conviction for building friendship with China. “Although there are problems or issues between us, I hope to build stable friendship, controlling difficult issues based on an idea of strategic reciprocal relationship and enhancing cooperation and exchange with broad perspective,” said Abe. In the conference after the meeting, Abe also told that China had been an old and important friend of Japan and the both were responsible for regional peace and stability or international economy.

Having heard only those points, the meeting seems to have finished in a friendly manner. That cannot be the case, anyway. “Unusual activities are extraordinarily regrettable,” told Abe to Xi on Chinese intrusion in Senkakus. “We need to maintain peace and stability with enhanced communication through dialogue and consultation and appropriately dealing with the issue in East China Sea,” told Xi, according to Chinese officials. While Abe required Xi to abide by international laws to eliminate uneasiness of neighbor nations in South China Sea, Xi demanded Abe behaving himself not to deteriorate relationship with being involved in the issue.

One thing they could agree on was to generate discussion for starting operation of Sea-Air Communication Mechanism between the two governments, to avoid accidental collision of both forces. The mechanism assumes setting a hotline between military sections of both sides. However, China has been unilaterally violating Japanese administration and sovereignty on Senkaku Islands and keeping on justifying itself, which could not be an attitude of maintaining moderate bilateral relationship.

To achieve successful result in the first G20 meeting in China, Xi was not willing to exchange sharp accusation each other. Abe was partly trying to save face of the host, with a little hope to draw compromise on containing uncontrollable North Korea. The bilateral relationship cannot be fully improved as long as China seeks hegemony in Western Pacific.