Onus on Abe to defrost China-Japan ties

Speculations about a China-Japan summit have generated a buzz in international media over the past few months, and its volume has become stronger as an Asia-Pacific summit in Beijing draws near.

Yet no matter how the guess game would unfold, a simple truth remains: the ball is in Japan's court for the two Asian neighbors to thaw their icy relations.

The media hubbub about a possible meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the upcoming informal leaders' meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum rose to a crescendo on Wednesday, when Xi met visiting former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

Xi conversed with Fukuda in a group meeting with dignitaries attending a working conference of the Board of Directors of the Boao Forum for Asia, a non-profit organization chaired by Fukuda.

The Xi-Fukuda meeting is imbued with an extra layer of intrigue as the latter has been cited by Japanese media as revealing that he met with Xi in late July in a secret mission to foster a China-Japan rapprochement and discerned both a deep concern in Beijing over Tokyo's China policy and military posture and a real willingness to mend bilateral ties.

Whether credible or not, the media hullabaloo serves as an unmistakable indicator of the far-reaching significance of the relationship between China and Japan, two economic giants and heavyweights in regional and global affairs.

Two years after Japan's so-called "nationalization" of China's Diaoyu Islands sent bilateral relations into a downward slide, it is high time that China-Japan interaction was put back on a normal track, both for the interests of the two nations themselves and for regional stability and development.

The onus is first and last on Abe. His administration's hard-line behavior over the Diaoyu Islands issue kept the China-Japan relationship below the freezing point after its temperature took a nosedive in the wake of the Diaoyu-purchasing farce of his predecessor's cabinet.

And his December visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors among Japan's war dead 14 convicted Class A war criminals of World War II, plunged bilateral relations to rock bottom.

Besides, his highly unpopular maneuvers to lift Japan's long-standing ban on exercising the right to collective self-defense and his advocacy of the so-called "proactive pacifism" have sent the whole region's nerves on edge, not least because of his country's militarist past and his administration's alarming unrepentant attitude toward history.

Beijing's stance on China-Japan relations has been consistent: China is ready to advance bilateral ties in a sustained, steady and healthy manner, but Japan has to change its flame-stoking and trust-eroding course.

Tokyo adopting a proper attitude to history should be the first step to break the thick ice trapping the China-Japan relationship. The Abe administration ought to stop denying hard historical facts and whitewashing Japan's militarist past, and Abe needs to abstain from visiting the Yasukuni Shrine.

On top of that, Tokyo should disabuse itself of illusions about the Diaoyu Islands. No sober mind expects the row over the group of uninhabited islets in East China Sea, which have been part of Chinese territory since ancient times, to be resolved soon, but at least the Japanese side should face up to the existence of the dispute and work with China to settle it in a peaceful way.

In addition, the Abe administration needs to clarify its intentions behind the lifting of the collective self-defense ban and the easing of Japan's arms exports restrictions, and fully explain the concept of "proactive pacifism," a coinage that to many smacks of assertiveness and even aggressiveness.

The Japanese prime minister has openly called for a meeting with Xi. Now it is advisable and imperative that he match his words with deeds. Without concrete action in the right direction on the part of Tokyo, the petition will only become yet another hypocritical gesture that betrays a lack of wisdom and courage in his China policy.