China, Japan aim to keep ties on track at summit

Tokyo, Apr 11: Japan and China, eager to nurture their fragile reconciliation, prepared today for a summit aimed at setting aside rancour over the past and focusing on ways to tame rivalry over energy and influence.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose ice-breaking visit to Beijing in October was a diplomatic coup after years of tension, hosts Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for a three-day visit studded with agreements, speeches and photo-ops meant to show ties are on the mend.

Efforts to end North Korea's nuclear arms programme are also certain to be on the agenda during Wen's visit, the first by a Chinese premier since 2000.

Today, Abe and Wen will hold a summit that may unveil cooperation in energy, environmental protection and developing a ''strategic'' framework to find more common ground between the two countries, whose economies are increasingly intertwined.

China including Hong Kong is already Japan's biggest trade partner, ahead of the United States, with two-way trade totalling nearly 29 trillion yen (240 billion dollars) last year.

In a symbolic gesture, the two countries signed an agreement on Wednesday allowing Japan to resume exports of rice to China, halted since 2003 when Beijing revised quarantine guidelines.

Yet even as they cheered the thaw, voices on both sides warned that the two countries have much distrust to overcome.

''For real improvement of ties, the melting of snow, and for mutual trust, not only words but also their substance is essential,'' Japan's conservative Sankei newspaper said in an editorial on Wednesday. ''We'd like to watch for the concrete manifestations of China's policy towards Japan.'' A leading official Chinese newspaper was equally cautious, saying it was up to Japan to show it was sincere. ''Melting ice needs more warmth from Japan,'' said the overseas edition of the People's Daily.

Since taking office, Abe has avoided the visits to a Tokyo war shrine made by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, that so angered China and led it to reject bilateral summits. Japanese World War Two leaders convicted as war criminals are honoured along with war dead at Yasukuni Shrine, seen in Asia as a symbol of the militarism that drove Japan to invade much of the region, including China, in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Abe has declined to say whether he will visit the shrine while in office. In an interview last week, Wen pointedly pressed him not to go.

Analysts in both Japan and China say there is no certainty that Abe, under pressure from his core conservative supporters, can heal ties long fraught by history and present rivalry.

''It's quite likely that right-wing Japanese forces close to Taiwan will increase pressure on Prime Minister Abe and interfere in the upturn in relations,'' wrote Liu Jiangyong, an influential expert on Japan at Tsinghua University, in an official Chinese paper yesterday.

China says Japan is too supportive of Taiwan, a Japanese colony for 50 years up to 1945 and now a self-governed island that Beijing wants to accept reunification with the mainland.

Beijing and Tokyo are also at loggerheads over the boundary between their exclusive economic zones in the East China Sea, an area that holds potentially lucrative gas and oil reserves.

Negotiators from the two sides have met twice in past weeks, seeking progress in the dispute before Abe and Wen meet. But Japanese officials have played down hopes of a breakthrough.

The two East Asian powers are also suspicious of each other's military ambitions and regional policies.

Both countries are trying to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, but Tokyo has favoured stiffer sanctions and is also focused on the fates of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang in past decades to help train the North's spies.

Japan says China is too secretive about its rapidly growing defence budget, while Beijing is wary of Abe's plans to revise his country's pacifist constitution to make it easier to deploy military forces and work more closely with the United States.

Reuters