林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

中日和緩

2015/12/5  聯合報/旺報/South China Morning Post

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1886717/japanese-and-chinese-ruling-parties-resume-talks-after                                  accessed Dec. 7, 2015

l   Japan and China have just resumed party-to-party talks after a hiatus of six years. The mainstream view after Xi-Abe meeting in late 2014 was not optimisitc and that the meeting represented only a temporary thaw of bilateral relations. Chong-Pin Lin December 5, 2015

l   中日剛恢復已中斷六年的黨對黨協商。2014年底習安會後主流看法是中日關係緩和只是曇花一現，不會有長期中日融冰的發展。林中斌 2015.12.5

China's Communist Party and Japan's ruling parties agreed to focus more on common interests rather than disagreements on Thursday as they resumed their consultative meeting for the first time in more than six years.

The move is another sign of improving ties between Asia's two major powers.

Read more: Let’s move on from past, says Shinzo Abe as China and Japan agree on system to avoid East China Sea clashes

The meeting in Beijing took place after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to accelerate the process of thawing once-frosty relations by increasing communications in various channels.

“There are a range of fields in which Japan and China can work together and it is necessary for both sides to continue win-win cooperation,” Sadakazu Tanigaki, secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, said in his opening remarks.

Among other issues, Tanigaki suggested that Japan and China could learn from each other how best to overcome social and economic difficulties stemming from their rapidly ageing populations.

Wang Jiarui, who was until quite recently head of the Communist Party's international department and represented the Chinese side at the talks, expressed similar sentiments.

“We would like to seek common ground as much as possible,” Wang said, adding that the two countries should also seek to control their persistent differences.

“Let's make efforts to lead a new stage of Asia's development, and peace and stability in the region and the world,” he said.

The 10-member Japanese delegation, which attended the meeting with the Communist Party and will be in Beijing until Saturday, is co-headed by Tanigaki and Yoshihisa Inoue, secretary general of Komeito party, the LDP's junior coalition partner.

On Friday, the Japanese lawmakers were also scheduled to meet with Yu Zhengsheng, who is ranked fourth in the Communist Party and serves as China's top political adviser, to discuss bilateral issues.

With the goal of gaining a greater understanding of the two countries' major policies, the first consultative meeting was held in February 2006 in China.

Their consultations were put on hold after the LDP, now led by Abe, was badly defeated in the 2009 general election and had to give up power to the Democratic Party of Japan after ruling the country almost without interruption since 1955.

The DPJ did not have strong connections with the Communist Party and bilateral ties deteriorated afterward, mostly because China was angered by the Japanese government's purchase of the main part of the Senkaku Islands from a Japanese citizen.

The uninhabited islands, for a long time controlled by Japan even before the transfer of their ownership, are claimed by China, which calls them Diaoyu.

China believes the purchase by the DPJ-led government in September 2012 was too abrupt and feels that it lost face just months before its once-a-decade leadership transition.

After Abe took office in December 2012, his attitude toward Japan's wartime actions further infuriated China and bilateral relations deteriorated, only to improve after he and Xi held their first meeting about a year ago.

In the most recent conversation between Abe and Xi, which took place on the sidelines of a UN climate summit in Paris on Monday, the two leaders again agreed to push ahead on improving relations.