Chinese President Xi Jinping told Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at their first meeting that China hopes Japan will "properly address" important issues such as history and Taiwan, Chinese state media reported on Saturday, UNN reported citing Reuters.
Details
Xi urged the two Asian neighbors to protect the global free trade system as well as stable and unimpeded production and supply chains when they met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Lima, Peru.
Ishiba told Xi he wanted to build a "constructive and stable" relationship, but asked him to lift the ban on Japanese seafood imports and to increase security measures for Japanese citizens in China following recent deadly knife attacks, and expressed concern about Chinese activities at sea.
According to a Japanese report on the meeting, Ishiba asked Xi to release Japanese citizens detained in China.
It was the first meeting between Ishiba, who took office in October, and the long-ruling Chinese leader.
Addendum
In recent months, Chinese and Japanese officials have taken steps to reopen several consultative negotiation platforms for the first time in years, indicating a possible resolution of tense relations.
In recent years, China and Japan have been at odds over issues such as territorial claims, trade tensions, and Beijing's anger over Tokyo's decision to dump treated water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, leading to a seafood ban.
Also raising concerns about anti-Japanese sentiment in China are two recent attacks in China - a knife attack that killed a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen in September and a knife attack that killed a Chinese woman who was trying to protect a Japanese mother and her child from an attacker.