Abe meets with China’s Li, focuses on Xi’s planned trip to Japan

BANGKOK, Nov 4, 2019, Kyodo. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday in Bangkok, during which they are expected to step up coordination for a planned state visit by President Xi Jinping to Japan next year, Kyodo News reported.

Meeting on the fringe of a series of multinational gatherings in the Thai capital, Abe and Li are also likely to exchange their views on regional affairs, including North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Abe may take up the politically sensitive issues of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and push Li to release a Japanese professor detained in China.

Japan-China relations have often been strained over wartime history and territory but the two neighbors now describe their ties as having “returned to a normal track.”

In a sign of a thaw in bilateral ties, the two neighbors have promoted reciprocal visits by their leaders. Abe traveled to Beijing in October last year, while Xi paid a visit to Osaka in June to attend the Group of 20 summit and held one-on-one talks with Abe.

Tokyo and Beijing have basically agreed on a visit by Xi next spring, with Abe inviting the Chinese head of state to come “when the cherry blossoms bloom.”

The Japanese leader is expected to visit China in December for a trilateral summit also involving South Korea, although bilateral relations between Tokyo and Seoul have sharply worsened with spats over wartime labor compensation and trade.

North Korea has recently resumed missile launches amid stalled denuclearization talks with the United States. Beijing is Pyongyang’s closest and most influential ally, but Tokyo has no diplomatic relations with the country.

Abe has expressed his readiness to meet the North’s leader Kim Jong Un “without conditions” in an attempt to make a breakthrough over the issue of Pyongyang’s abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.