Ball in Japan's court for Xi-Abe talks: China envoy

This "opportunity" comes a few weeks after the many members of the diet are due to visit Yasukuni.

This meeting won't happen. China knows this.

No concessions, no talk. The ball is in Japan’s court and it is surely a very heavy one.

Observers say the strategy is intended to bounce the Chinese president into a summit, or into a public snub that allows Japan to paint itself as the aggrieved party in a gathering PR war.

Dumb strategy. As the recent crisis in Hong Kong so clearly demonstrated, China does not give in to outside pressure, and could care less about "a gathering PR war", especially since Chinese citizens will never know about it anyway. Abe needs to re-think things.

To regard China as a mature nation is a mistake. Though,Japan has not a single soldier overseas,.has engaged in no conflict since World War II and does not .possess nuclear weapons, Beijing cries in alarm that the;Japanese are hurtling toward re-militarization. Through this ploy, the Chinese seek to discredit Japan in Southeast Asia, where they are commercial competitors.

Japan has to make concessions if there are to be talks.

This is about it. Who will make concessions just for a talk?

In other words: give us everything we want and we'll talk.

I guess it would be rare for a host nation's leader to refuse a meeting with guest nations' leader but I don't think they care how immature they look in the global community. Abe should just stick with his "no prerequisites my door is alway open" policy.

The "concession" China really wants is for Japan to recognize the Senkaku Islands as "disputed territory," all the rest is just the usual Chinese propaganda. China is a most immature nation, but it must know this will not happen. In yet another mistake in a long list of Chinese diplomatic blunders they have once again painted themselves into a corner, and are in between a rock and a hard place with no easy way out without "losing face." Xi is sadly deluded, he seems to believe he can turn back the clock a few hundred years when China was something more than it is now. China does not seem to fathom how negatively it is viewed in the rest of the world.

Which concessions China has done to move the ball on Japan's court?

In the Political World they say "Timing is Everything" and it amazes me that China now says this kind of garbage right in the Eve of the Mass Japanese Pilgrimage of its Politicians to Yasukuni Shrine (tomorrow).

It's almost like a sarcastic Joke in a way...

The truth is: China will never have any genuine intentions of ever taking with Japan's Top Leaders EVER regarding the Senkakku Islands, World War II etc.

China is just throwing THEIR opportunities away and it's quite notable that as long as The U.S. remains committed to the Peace Treaty Obligations to Japan, then there will be no reason for Japan to STOP the incursions of Chinese, South Korean, and Russian ships and planes into its sovereign LONG STANDING Terreiotiry.

Let's see how this plays out tomorrow in the press after "The Shrine" visit.

Come on, just forget about this news because nothing will happen!

A RealistOct. 16, 2014 - 10:47AM JST The "concession" China really wants is for Japan to recognize the Senkaku Islands as "disputed territory," all the rest is just the usual Chinese propaganda. China is a most immature nation, but it must know this will not happen.

If Japan has definite ownership of Senkaku/Daioyu islands without doubt, why would Japan offer to explore resources jointly with China If Japan owns it, they didn't need to ask China. It shows Japan has a weak claim and they know it. This already happened few years ago. The solution to the competing claims emerged in 2008, when Japan and China reached a principled consensus on joint development of an area that includes the potentially gas-rich Chunxiao/Shirakaba field. However, the 2010 ramming of Japanese Coast Guard cutters by a Chinese fishing boat and the subsequent arrest of the Chinese captain by the Japanese, have halted all movement toward formalizing the 2008 consensus.

In 1978, there was signing of a treaty between China and Japan for Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute. At the time, PM Fukuda and China's Deng Xiaoping accepted that "the dispute shall be posponed" "and for future generation to solve". If you own it like you said, why did J-goverment agreed to postpone the dispute? We know today, Japan goverment states "there is no dispute". In 1972, the Okinawa Revision Agreement grants Japan the rights of adminstration and not sovereignty. Why did U.S. only granted Japan administrative rights of Senkaku/Diaoyu and not the sovereignty?

It's really ridiculous to see those saying about China needing to make concession when Japan needs China much more than the other way around.

Stop running away from reality won't you ?

If Japan has definite ownership of Senkaku/Daioyu islands without doubt, why would Japan offer to explore resources jointly with China If Japan owns it, they didn't need to ask China.

The better question is, if China has definite ownership of Senkaku islands, why did they not build their field on the Senkaku side of the equidistant Senkaku/China line?

Why did U.S. only granted Japan administrative rights of Senkaku/Diaoyu and not the sovereignty?

Where do you get this from?

nigelboyOct. 17, 2014 - 03:57AM JST Where do you get this from?

From the 1972 treaty, show me where it states "Japan has the sovereignty over Senkaku/Diaoyu."

From the 1972 treaty, show me where it states "Japan has the sovereignty over Senkaku/Diaoyu."

Where does it state "China has the sovereignty over Senkaku/Diaoyu"?

This Diaoyu islands issue is intentionally started by Japan because Japan is desperate and afraid of having US abandon its defense agreement with Japan.

Read about it here : www.forbes.com/sites/stephenharner/2012/11/07/is-japan-risking-war-to-save-the-u-s-japan-alliance/

The HARSH reality won't change no matter how hard you try to run away from reality.

Japan needs China MUCH MUCH MORE than China needs Japan. Period.

like the issue with kosovo/albania with serbia borderlines neightbours that are against your gains will never cooperate. Its the same as here china and japan. because they both wont let go of the islands and china seems to practice old nationalistic motivations to take over enemy, not saying that im sure of but heard of their anti-japanese movements. Japan on the other hand i guess are trying to pay respect to the past with china and promise one another it wont happen again. But china doesnt want it in the book at all i guess.

Whether Japan "needs" China is not the issue. In my opinion, the whole world is now connected,...

It seems Abe is ensuring Japan not to be "disturbed" by the "unsincere" China,“非诚勿扰”are the words, sound familier isn't it?

Whatever, no country is going to die without others, esp a wise Japan, as long as there are peace for a couple of decades, or perhaps a few more centuries.

Stay cool Abe, Chineses and a few others are wise to let you undisturbed. You are winning, didn't you notice that?

But Xi’s ambassador to Tokyo, Cheng Yonghua, on Wednesday reiterated Beijing’s line that Japan has to make concessions if there are to be talks.

Never trust Communist making demands, hell, never trust a Communist!

Gee, I wonder what concessions do the Communist want? Let's see, first Japan has to admit that Senkaku belongs to Communist China, next Okinawa, then the entire East China sea and lastly any thing else that Communist China wants.

Oh wait, almost forgot the most important demand, Communist China wants Japan to be just like South Korea and kowtow before emperor Xi. Then jump through hoops and beg for treats like a certain President does whenever she is told to.

But, this will go nowhere. Japan will never play it like South Korea has and this will anger his royal highness to no end. Because, Emperor Xi has made it a point to win the Propaganda war he started. He has spent lots of cash paying for his cold war against Japan. If Japan doesn't buckle under and kowtow before him like South Korea has Emperor Xi will lose face and he will get desperate.

So, emperor Xi needs Japan to kowtow, but when this doesn't happen he will take his cold war to the next level. If he doesn't win this cold war soon there might be more sounds of gunfire coming from Zhongnanhai.

http://ifair.eu/en/think/whos-after-hu-the-bo-xilai-incident-and-the-future-of-political-leadership-in-china/

So, expect things to get even hotter in this region.

WhirledPeas, note that China was not a signatory to SF Peace Treaty even though Taiwan was part of China, the disputed islands were part of Taiwan, and China was one of the Allied Powers. On September 18, 1951, the Chinese government issued another statement stressing that the SF Treaty is illegal and invalid and can under no circumstances be recognized. Note also that "The Allied Powers recognize the full sovereignty of the Japanese people over Japan and its territorial waters" meant for the sovereignty of the people and territorial waters, nothing mentioned about the lands or islands.

According to international laws, Japan would not have sovereignty over the islands during the period of occupation by the US because Japan had no control of that territory. You also failed to mention Cairo and Potsdam Declarations in which China was a part of. Potsdam Declaration specifically said that "points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies" and "Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine." Notice that Okinawa was not mentioned because its sovereignty was in question. And according to Cairo Declaration, "All the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China. Japan will also be expelled from all other territories she has taken by violence and greed". When Japan returned Taiwan to China, both sides adopted the 1945 administrative arrangement of Taiwan, with the Chinese unaware that the uninhabited “Senkaku Islands” were in fact the former Diaoyu Islands. This explains the belated protest from Taipei and Beijing over U.S. administration of the islands after the war. In 1958, the Chinese government released a statement on the territorial sea, announcing that Taiwan and its adjacent islands belong to China.

So, why would China raise the issue of ownership of the islands when they were supposed to be returned to China in the first place according to the Declarations? And, why would the two leaders agreed to shelve the issue for the next generation to solve? Notice that China kept its words for decades until Japan decided to open the Pandora box. Japan and China even once agreed to explore the resources together in the disputed area.

You were right that the US had no position on the sovereignty of the islands because it can’t help Japan on that issue. Isn’t it strange that the US would take no position when Japan is a very close ally? Part of the conditions of attaining sovereignty is having effective control, but now the control is no longer effective because China has started to patrol and created the ADIZ over the area. You may think that China has become aggressive but on a contrary, China only tries to assert its sovereignty after Japan broke the agreement first.

Strangely enough you would link the incident in 2010 to the nationalization of the islands. What would you expect China to say when the incident happened in the disputed area? Japan caused it. What would you expect China to respond when Japan chose to nationalize the islands after the Chinese leader advised not to do it? Japan has broken the status quo. J gov’t has repeatedly insisted that no dispute exists, despite you and I, and the rest of the world see a major dispute, why is that? When there is “no dispute” how can China take Japan to Court? I heard Japan tried to take S Korea to Court over the disputed islands but S Korea still insisted that there was “no dispute,” now you can see how sneaky J gov’t is. Sooner or later, J gov’t will have to admit that there is a dispute because when all else failed this is the only way to save Abenomics.

WhirledPeas, note that China was not a signatory to SF Peace Treaty even though Taiwan was part of China, the disputed islands were part of Taiwan, and China was one of the Allied Powers.

They were not. That's the whole point. So your essay afterwards are basically meaningless. Sorry.

nigelboy, Your apology is accepted because I know how Japanese like to create doubts in people’s mind. My points stand, though.

@flowers

If you look at the history, the real problem is how U.S. handle the peace treaty after the WWII. PRC's Zhou Enlai supported the Soviet proposal that all states that participated with their armed forces against Japan should prepare the treaty. Instead, the U.S. had monopolized the task to exclude China. Why did the U.S. wanted to exclude China in 1951 SF Treaty? On the surface of course the Communist Party was now in power and U.S. and Chinese troops were fighting each other in Korea. But Britain also had troops in Korea and yet was prepared to invite the PRC to the conference. It was actually the Soviet Union that was behind the North Korean attack on the south, yet the U.S. permitted the Soviet Union actively to participate in the conference. China suffered the longest and the deepest from Japanese aggression. The SF Treaty divided China with numerous other territorial disputes that the U.S. used in justifying its continuing presence in the region.

Whirledpeas, you seem to have a lot of twisted logics, such as:

“if Senkakus belonged to China PRC would have definitely mentioned them in that protest letter.” Only mentioned the words “Formosa or Taiwan” and “such minor islands as we determine” were enough.

“Rather the SF Treaty itemized which territory Japan had to renounce and Okinawa Prefecture was not one of them.” Okinawa had its own sovereignty, where would you think it would be renounced to? You refuted your own logic there; a main logic here is Japan is not entitled to any territories that it gained by war or by force.

“Territorial transfers are done by treaty, and no treaty had changed JPN’s sovereignty over Okinawa Prefecture.” Let me ask you this, who now has the sovereignty over Keril Islands and Dokdo Islands? Do you still think Japan still has the sovereignty? In international law, sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit so it may or may not be through treaty. Even before the congressional hearing and the reversion in 1971, it was the US position that “the treaty alone is not necessarily the final determinant of the sovereignty issue.”

“No, Okinawa was not mentioned because Okinawa was not territory that Japan was told to renounce.” Re-think you logic here, nothing was about renouncing Okinawa, it was about the limit of Japanese sovereignty.

“The fact is Japan did not steal the Senkaku islands from China, nor did Japan acquire them via the Treaty of Shimonoseki, nor as part of Taiwan. There was no violence and greed involved.” In his biography Koga Tatsushiro, the first Japanese citizen to lease the islands from the Meiji government, attributed Japan’s possession of the islands to “the gallant military victory of our Imperial forces.” The Meiji government, following a cabinet decision in early 1895, promptly incorporated the islands. Negotiations with China never took place and this decision was passed during the Sino-Japanese War. The incorporation was never made public. It took them ten years after the “claimed” discovery to incorporate the islands and the survey was not even complete. China claims a historical title to the islands on the bases of its discovery, its inclusion into its defense perimeter from Japanese pirates during the Ming dynasty, and its incorporation into China as part of Taiwan. The islands were recorded under Kavalan, Taiwan, in the Revised Gazetteer of Fujian Province of 1871 before the start of the first Sino-Japanese War. It was publicly announced. So now it is up to you to think whether it was through violence or greed. But I think it was both.

Maps can be deceiving especially historical ones. There are many distorted versions of maps especially those developed during the war or occupation. What we should consider are those maps produced by other countries not in dispute, and China has plenty of them as proofs.