MOSCOW, November 9 (RIA Novoati), Daria Chernyshova — The upcoming meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to further cement the bilateral ties which have been on a diplomatic upswing recently, though the underlying issues such as the islands row are expected to remain unresolved, experts told RIA Novosti.
The meeting between the leaders of Asia's two largest economies will take place early next week, as the heads of 21 nations gather in Beijing for the for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. The talks will follow the Friday agreement, when Tokyo and Beijing jointly acknowledged their competing claims over the sovereignty of Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.
"The agreement reached on Friday between China and Japan seems to mark an effort to get the bilateral relationship back onto a more positive track," senior consulting fellow with Chatham House's Asia Program Tim Summers told RIA Novosti.
"The timing is obviously linked to APEC. Xi and Abe will meet in my view, but it is not clear how substantive that meeting will be. Both sides want an improvement in relations, but the prospects remain uncertain as underlying issues (history, maritime disputes) remain unresolved," Summers said.
Praising the positive development, director of Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS) of the Brookings Institution Richard Bush III is less optimistic about the upcoming meeting.
"I don't expect any of the bilateral issues to be resolved. The meeting simply creates the possibility of addressing those issues over time," Bush, whose two-decade public service career spans Congress, the intelligence community and the US State Department told RIA Novosti.
Wang Dehua, director and professor of the Institute for South and Central Asia Studies at Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies described the Friday deal as a breakthrough, as the sides reached a "consensus on handling contentious historical and territorial issues after years of standoffs."
"The two sides have agreed to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogue through various multilateral and bilateral channels and to make efforts to build political mutual trust," Wang Dehua told RIA Novosti.
He stressed however "it depends upon Abe attitude to make tangible efforts to properly address relevant issues in order to improve bilateral ties to uphold the political foundation for China-Japan relations strictly according to the spirit of the four-point agreement, as well as the principles of the four political documents reached between China and Japan."
Finding a solution to the islands dispute remains a regional security priority, and "a lot of national pride is at stake on both sides," Merriden Varrall, Director of East Asia Program at Lowy Institute for International Policy told RIA Novosti.
"Tensions have been high and there is considerable fear of an accidental clash between Japanese and Chinese military or civilians in the area leading to real conflict," said Varrall, who was a policy advisor at UNDP China.
At the same time the APEC leaders' summit is one of the first large-scale international events that Xi is hosting, and is a proof of China's rising might. Certainly, as Chinese economic powerhouse is playing a more significant role in the world, Beijing's aspirations are growing too.
"It seems fairly clear that China wants to increase its maritime influence in the Asia-Pacific region, indeed it has said as much. It is not clear exactly why it wants to do so, or what it wants to do with any increase in its influence — it is likely that this is also related very closely with national pride," Merriden Varrall told RIA Novosti.
APEC, founded in 1989 to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region, offers China a chance to demonstrate its global status, as Tim Summers explained.
"But also to set out an inclusive approach to regional institutions, following high-level Chinese attention paid earlier this year to CICA [Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia] and SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], neither of which include the US," Summers told RIA Novosti.
Wang Dehua pointed out that China's goal is APEC Free Trade Agreement in which China will play an important but not a leading role, which makes it different from Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) dominated by the United States.
"My analysis is that China's foreign policy is all about pursuing the path of peaceful development, through an open-minded global approach based on mutual benefit, and by actively participating in the addressing of global issues, to build a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity," Wang Dehua said.
Merriden Varral pointed out that China's regional and global aspirations are different, as "it is not obvious that they have any desire to expand influence further than the immediate region, except where they may need to defend the security of their investments." Moreover, China is not aiming to spread its ideology or politics, or control the globe as "hegemon, or even part of a G2 with the US."
"China's general aspiration is to expand its influence and command greater respect. These are long-standing goals, but Xi brings a greater energy to them than we have seen in the past," Richard Bush III told RIA Novosti.
