Japan has much to gain by improving ties with China
During his first visit to Japan as State councilor and foreign minister from Sunday to Tuesday, Wang Yi will co-chair the fourth China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in Tokyo, which is welcome news for both countries.
Since September 2012, when the Japanese government decided to "nationalize" China's Diaoyu Islands, bilateral relations have suffered one blow after another. Even though President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing in November 2014, bilateral ties remained cold.
The deep structural problems between the two countries are yet to be solved. For China, Japan's illegal "nationalization" of the Diaoyu Islands and its leaders' distortion of the country's history before and during World War II are unacceptable.
