CHINESE Premier Li Keqiang will travel to Tokyo for his country’s first joint summit with Japan and South Korea since 2015, the clearest sign yet of improving ties between the three neighbouring countries.
The meeting was announced by China and Japan yesterday as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China hopes to improve its relationship with Japan in a bid to move on from disputes that date back to before World War Two.
Beijing frequently accuses Tokyo of not properly atoning for Japan’s invasion of China before and during the war.
Ties between China and Japan, the world’s second and third-largest economies, have also been plagued by a long-running territorial dispute over a cluster of East China Sea islets and suspicion in China about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution.
“China-Japan ties always sail against the current, either forging ahead or drifting backward,” Wang said.
“We hope that the Japanese side will neither relax in its efforts nor fall back, and turn the spoken statements into concrete actions.”
Japanese Foreign Minister Kono Taro said that the two countries shared a major responsibility in safeguarding the stability and prosperity of Asia.
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