Consensus maps out path for ties
China and Japan should work together to enhance mutual trust and create conditions for their leaders to visit each other’s countries, attendees at an annual forum agreed in Beijing.
They voiced their agreement in the Beijing Consensus, which was issued at the closing session of the 13th Beijing-Tokyo Forum on Sunday.
That the two countries’ leaders have met several times recently and multiple communication channels are recovering is vital to building mutual trust and solving differences, the statement said.
China and Japan should increase their strategic dialogue to further improve relations, take effective measures to avoid posing threats to each other and form a closer partnership, it said.
Bilateral ties, which plummeted in 2012, when Japan announced the “nationalization” of the Diaoyu Islands, saw signs of improvement this year.
In July, President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, and again in Da Nang, Vietnam, in November on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.
This month, the two countries held high-level consultations on maritime affairs in Shanghai, during which they made progress in establishing and launching the air and sea liaison protocol between their defense ministries.
Bilateral ties stand at “an important point in history as well as an opportunity for development”, the Beijing Consensus read, voicing hope for the launch of the liaison mechanism as soon as possible.
The two countries should act according to the four political documents and the four-point agreement they have signed, which is a prerequisite for healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, the document said.
Also, the delegates agreed both sides should cooperate on building a more open economic order as the trend of anti-globalization and protectionism is getting stronger.
Jia Qingguo, head of the School of International Studies at Peking University, said both countries have benefited from globalization and the current international order, and want to maintain and improve these systems, so there is great potential for cooperation under such goals.
The international nonproliferation regime, an open international trade system and the Paris Climate Agreement are among the fields they can cooperate in, said Jia.
Yang Bojiang, vice-president of the Institute of Japanese Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said continued economic cooperation, a “ballast” of bilateral ties, will help enhance mutual trust in the long run.
Yang suggested the two countries carry out pragmatic cooperation to gradually turn confrontational thinking into more cooperative engagement.
Yasushi Akashi, former under secretary-general of the United Nations, said people of the two countries, “neighbors that cannot move away”, should understand they have no choice but to be friendly toward each other.
The two countries should enrich their cooperation, which will contribute to peace and prosperity of Asia and the world, Akashi said.
The forum also discussed the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. The delegates’ consensus was that the Korean Peninsula should be denuclearized and that the issue should be solved peacefully.
Since 2005, the Beijing-Tokyo Forum has gathered officials, scholars and business leaders from China and Japan to discuss issues in bilateral ties every year.