Japan hopes to renew high-level dialogue

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Saturday the recent trip to China by Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of Abe's ruling partner New Komeito Party, was encouraging and his administration will prepare for a possible resumption of top-level dialogue with China, according to Japanese media reports.

Analysts said although Japan has showed some willingness to improve relations with China and a higher-level contact between the two countries is possible, Japan still needs to take more concrete actions before China-Japan relations can be brought back on track.

Yamaguchi, who met with Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee on Friday in Beijing, briefed Abe on the outcome of his four-day visit on Saturday.

"Your visit to China was very good. It was encouraging that a consensus was reached on the need to promote a mutually beneficial relationship while considering the larger picture," Abe told Yamaguchi, according to Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Abe said the Japanese government plans to continue internal discussions in hopes of setting the stage for high-level dialogue with China, the newspaper said.

"I think our prime minister wishes to visit China. The priority is to resume dialogue, which will ultimately push a summit for the leaders of the two countries," Yamaguchi was quoted by the Kyodo news agency as saying.

In his meeting with Xi, Yamaguchi handed a letter from Abe that called for the promotion of a mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.

Yamaguchi's New Komeito Party is the key ally of Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and is considered less hawkish than the LDP, but he is not a member of the Japanese government.

Yamaguchi's meeting with Xi is the highest-level contact between China and Japan since an island dispute intensified in September 2012 when the then ruling Democratic Party of Japan decided to nationalize the Diaoyu Islands.

The meeting showed that China attaches importance to the improvement of China-Japan relations and the meeting's results are better than Japan expected, Geng Xin, deputy director of the Tokyo-based Japan-China Communication Institute, told the Global Times.

"It is possible that China and Japan can move toward higher-level contact in the coming days," he said.

But Huang Dahui, director of the Center for East Asia Studies at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that it is unlikely the hawkish Abe will implement an immediate policy shift on the issue.

"Japan's government and public opinion on the issue remains very tough. Japan needs to move to create more conditions for more contact between Chinese and Japanese leaders," he said.

Liu Zhenmin, Chinese permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, on Saturday told a session on the sidelines of the global gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that Beijing hopes Japan will face up to historical reality "and take the right measures to overcome the difficulty in relations with China," the AP reported.

Analysts said the position of the US could also affect the situation. Abe is expected to pay a visit to the US and meet with US President Barack Obama next month.

The Obama administration dispatched State Department officials to Japan last week in an effort to defuse tensions, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a security treaty between Washington and Tokyo binds the US to defend Japan against attack on the Diaoyu Islands.

Huang said that while Washington is trying to show that it wants to maintain a balanced situation, in reality it is siding with Japan.

"The US does not hope to see China seize the initiative on the dispute, but neither does it want the situation to spiral out of control. All it wants is to reap profits from the row and consolidate its regional influence," Geng said.