Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Friday she raised “serious concerns” about the South China Sea, Hong Kong and Xinjiang in her first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Takaichi, Japan’s first woman prime minister, has long been seen as a China hawk and has been a regular visitor to the Yasukuni shrine that honours Japan’s war dead, a site that angers China and South Korea.
She said she told Xi at the APEC summit in South Korea that she wanted a “strategic and mutually beneficial relationship between Japan and China”.
But she told reporters that she also raised a number of thorny issues with the Chinese leader, saying that it was “important for us to engage in direct, candid dialogue”.
“We… expressed serious concerns regarding actions in the South China Sea, as well as the situations in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” Takaichi said.
Beijing vehemently denies accusations of human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, saying its policies in Xinjiang have eradicated extremism and boosted development.
China has sweeping assertions of sovereignty over the South China Sea despite an international ruling in 2016 concluding its claims have no legal basis.
Tensions between China and the Philippines — which, like Japan, is a close US ally — have been particularly fraught, with frequent maritime confrontations.
Takaichi said she also raised with Xi the Japanese-administered Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, in the East China Sea where Japanese and Chinese vessels frequently face off.
She also said she spoke to Xi about export controls on items including rare earths that are vital for a wide range of industries.
Takaichi added that she also pressed for the release of Japanese citizens detained in China and requested that the safety of Japanese expatriates in China be ensured.
“I conveyed that we would like these matters to be addressed,” she said.
Takaichi is also a strong backer of Taiwan and supports security cooperation with the self-ruled island that China claims as its territory.
“Regarding Taiwan, there was some discussion from the Chinese side,” Takaichi said.
“I stated that for the stability and security in this region, maintaining good cross-strait relations is important,” she said.
Around 60,000 US military personnel are based in Japan. Takaichi hosted US President Donald Trump this week, with both making speeches on the deck of an American aircraft carrier.
Takaichi announced last week Japan would be spending two percent of gross domestic product on defence this fiscal year, two years ahead of schedule.
“It could be a frosty get-to-know-you meeting as Xi Jinping has not sent a congratulatory message to Takaichi, wary of her reputation as a China hawk,” Yee Kuang Heng, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, told AFP before the meeting.
“Overall though, stability is a shared priority,” Heng said.
