Possible visit to Tokyo by Xi ‘invaluable’
China’s ambassador to Tokyo has said President Xi Jinping’s official visit to Japan as a state guest, if realised, would be “invaluable” for bilateral relations that have often been strained over issues that include a territorial row.
Kong Xuanyou also stressed that China must continue to emphasise “leader-level” exchanges with Japan, weeks after the two Asian powers held their first summit in almost three years.
Kong’s remarks came as protests against Beijing’s “zeroCovid” policy, involving lockdowns and quarantines under strict public surveillance, have been spreading across China, with some demonstrators making a rare demand for Xi to step down.
While the stringent coronavirus restrictions have prevented the flow of people between the two nations, Kong expressed expectations that Beijing would ease the measures down the road for its people.
A state visit to Japan by Xi, who secured an unprecedented third five-year term in power in October, would be “an important thing and an invaluable strategic driving force” for the SinoJapanese
relationship, Kong said in an interview.
Xi had been expected to visit Japan as a state guest in the spring of 2020 to meet Emperor Naruhito and hold a summit with thenprime minister Shinzo Abe, who was gunned down during an election campaign speech in July.
But Tokyo and Beijing were forced to postpone the trip by Xi against a backdrop of the outbreak of Covid-19.
On the fringes of an AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Bangkok in the middle of last month, Xi met in person with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the first time since the Japanese premier took office in October last year.
At their summit, the first since December 2019 between Tokyo and Beijing, Xi and Kishida agreed that the two countries would work together to stabilise bilateral ties, but they did not touch on the president’s state visit, according to a Japanese official.
The last Chinese president to be received by Japan as a state guest was Hu Jintao in May 2008.
The two nations have been at odds over the disputed Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea – which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands – with Chinese coastguard vessels repeatedly entering what Tokyo claims to be its territorial waters around a group of the islets.
Kong, however, suggested that Beijing and Tokyo would arrange Xi’s visit depending on the pandemic situation, saying he believed that people-to-people exchanges between the two countries were likely to “recover at a full scale in the near future”.
Amid recent nationwide protests against China’s stance to stick with its zero-Covid policy, Kong said Xi’s government would “try to do its best” while “paying attention to the will of the people”.
China-Japan ties, meanwhile, have been frayed over Taiwan, especially after United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a trip to the self-ruled island in early August.
Following the visit by Pelosi, the third-highest-ranking US official, China conducted large-scale military drills in areas encircling Taiwan in retaliation, firing ballistic missiles, some of which reportedly fell into Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) east of the island.
Kong said China had not accepted Tokyo’s claim that the missiles landed in Japan’s EEZ, saying “we have not determined the boundaries of the sea area”.
Beijing and Taipei have been governed separately since they split in 1949 as a result of a civil war. Xi has described Taiwan as a “core interest”, pledging to reunify what China regards as a renegade province with the mainland by force, if necessary.
[A state visit to Japan by Xi would be] an invaluable strategic driving force [for the ties]
AMBASSADOR KONG XUANYOU