BEIJING (TheBlaze/AP) — Following more than two years of deep tensions over an island dispute, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held an ice-breaking meeting Monday on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific conference in Beijing.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shakes hands with China's President Xi Jinping (R), during their meeting at the Great Hall of the People, on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, November 10, 2014 in Beijing, China. (Image source: Pool/Getty Images)
The spat between China and Japan over uninhabited East China Sea islands raised concerns of a military confrontation between Asia's two largest economies. China also has been angry over what it sees as an effort by Japan to play down its brutal 20th-century invasion and occupation of China.
The meeting between Xi and Abe in Beijing's Great Hall of the People gives rise to hopes the countries will dial down the tensions. The two met ahead of Tuesday's summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
The two sides had issued a joint statement on Friday agreeing to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues.
In that statement, Japan said it acknowledged differing views over the status of the islands, called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japan. China has long demanded that Tokyo acknowledge that the islands' sovereignty is in dispute, something Japan has refused to do.
China and Japan have had poor relations for decades, rooted in Japan's fears of China's economic and political rise and Beijing's sense of victimhood. Japan's nationalization of the islands in September 2012 infuriated Beijing, raising regional security fears as Chinese patrol ships repeatedly penetrated the surrounding waters to confront Japanese coast guard vessels.
Tensions remained strained after the late 2012 election of Abe, a conservative nationalist who infuriated China when in 2013 he visited a Tokyo Shinto shrine honoring Japan's war dead, including executed war criminals — an act Beijing said shows Abe's insensitivity to China's suffering during the war. His government's reinterpretation of Japan's pacifist constitution to allow a greater role for its military has also raised alarms in Beijing.
Here's a look at the leaders' awkward handshake:
This story has been updated with video.
