BEIJING: Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya raised “serious concerns” on Wednesday over China’s military buildup as he met counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing, Tokyo said.

On his first visit to China since becoming Japan’s top diplomat earlier this year, Iwaya told Wang that Tokyo was “closely monitoring the Taiwan situation and recent military developments”, according to his foreign ministry.

Meeting with Wang at Beijing’s opulent Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, he also “expressed serious concerns over the East China Sea situation, including around the Senkaku Islands (and) China’s increasing military activity”, Tokyo said. Iwaya in addition called for the “swift release” of Japanese nationals detained by Chinese authorities.

“Opaqueness surrounding the anti-espionage law is causing Japanese people to think twice about visiting China,” he warned. But the two ministers also agreed to work towards a visit to Japan by Wang “at the earliest possible timing next year”.

Beijing’s presence around disputed territories in the region sparks Tokyo’s ire

China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the meeting would take place “at an appropriate time”, without mentioning discussions of Beijing’s military manoeuvring or detained Japanese nationals.

Iwaya earlier met Chinese Premier Li Qiang and agreed to work for a “constructive and stable” relationship, Japanese news agency Kyodo said. China and Japan are key trading partners, but increased friction over disputed territories and military spending has frayed ties in recent years.

Beijing’s more assertive presence around disputed territories in the region, meanwhile, has sparked Tokyo’s ire, leading it to boost security ties with key ally the United States and other countries. But the return of Donald Trump to the White House has “heightened Japan’s anxiety over the stability of US-Japan relations” and Beijing could be seeking to exploit that, Taipei-based analyst Jeremy Chih-Cheng Chang said.

Beijing was likely aiming to diminish anti-China sentiment within Japan’s ruling party, he said, using the transition period between two US administrations as an opportunity to advance its regional agenda. “Any shifts in the balance of Japan’s foreign policy could have significant implications for the entire Indo-Pacific region,” he said.

Tense ties

In August, a Chinese military aircraft staged the first confirmed incursion by China into Japanese airspace, followed weeks later by a Japanese warship sailing through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.

Beijing’s rare test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean in late September also drew strong protests from Tokyo, which said it had not been given advance notice.

Tensions between the two sides also flared last year over Japan’s decision to begin releasing into the Pacific Ocean some of the 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of reactor cooling water amassed since the 2011 tsunami that led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster — an operation the UN atomic agency deemed safe.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2024