Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met in the South Korean port city of Busan to try to find a solution to disputed issues.
Kamikawa met Wang in person for the first time and said their meeting was “extremely meaningful.” They also agreed to begin meetings on security and economic issues, but gave no details.
It is well known that the leaders of Japan and China met in San Francisco 10 days ago on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and reached a vague agreement to ease the seafood dispute. The Chinese ban on Japanese seafood comes after the 24 August incident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was hit by a tsunami and began dumping treated radioactive wastewater into the sea.
According to the Japanese side, this wastewater is much safer than international standards and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded that the environmental and health effects of its discharge are negligible. China, on the other hand, condemns the action and calls the discharge “nuclear-contaminated water.”
Wang said China opposes Japan’s “irresponsible action” of dumping sewage into the sea, according to a readout of the meeting by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
However, Wang recognised the importance of China-Japan relations and called on both sides to reaffirm that they “are cooperative partners rather than threats to each other, and they should be committed to peaceful development.”
The foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea and China will meet on Sunday to resume a trilateral summit of their leaders, which has not been held since 2019 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 and the complex relations between them.
