TOKYO — High diplomats from Japan and China met for bilateral talks Saturday to attempt to resolve disputes together with China’s ban on Japanese seafood, which has hit Japanese exporters.
Japanese Overseas Minister Yoko Kamikawa and her Chinese language counterpart, Wang Yi, met in South Korea’s southern port metropolis of Busan. They are going to be part of their host, Park Jin, for three-way talks on Sunday.
Kamikawa, who took workplace in September and met with Wang in particular person for the primary time, mentioned their assembly was “extraordinarily significant.” She mentioned that they had agreed to start out safety and financial conferences, however gave no particulars.
Japanese and Chinese language leaders met 10 days in the past in San Francisco, on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Financial Cooperation summit, and achieved a obscure settlement on easing the seafood dispute. China’s ban on Japanese seafood has been in place because the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear energy plant started discharging handled radioactive wastewater into the ocean on Aug. 24.
Japan says the wastewater is way safer than worldwide requirements and that the Worldwide Atomic Power Company has concluded the environmental and well being affect of its launch is negligible. China calls the discharge “nuclear-contaminated water.”
Wang mentioned China opposed Japan’s “irresponsible motion” of releasing the wastewater into the ocean, in response to a readout of the assembly by the Chinese language Overseas Ministry. He known as for an unbiased monitoring mechanism for the wastewater launch.
Wang mentioned China and Japan ought to set up that they “are cooperative companions quite than threats to one another, and they need to be dedicated to peaceable growth.”
The overseas ministers from Japan, South Korea and China will meet Sunday to set the stage for resuming a trilateral summit of their leaders, which has not been held since 2019 because of the COVID-19 outbreak and their difficult ties.
Japan, South Korea and China are shut financial and cultural companions, however their relationships have suffered on-and-off setbacks as a consequence of a mixture of points, together with Japan’s wartime atrocities, the U.S.-China rivalry and North Korea’s nuclear and missile applications.
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Related Press journalist Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.