JAPAN: China and Japan, whose relations are at their lowest point in decades over Tokyo's wartime past, met yesterday to discuss a disputed, energy-rich area of the East China Sea, but chances of progress looked slim.
The talks come a week after Chinese vice-premier Wu Yi cancelled a meeting with Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and left the country a day early, furious at his refusal to stop visits to a controversial war shrine.
China and Japan are the world's second- and third-largest oil consumers and have said they are committed to the natural gas talks, but traded accusations last week ahead of the two-day meeting in Beijing.
China criticised Japan for jumping the gun and starting to award exploration rights to private companies. Japan responded by saying Beijing's going ahead with construction in the region was "outrageous".
Tokyo has demanded China stop energy exploration and provide data on its gas development projects in the area.
"If they continue with their own development and do not present the information we have asked for, discussions cannot go smoothly," Nobuyori Kodaira, head of Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, said.
"So, since we have asked them many times to stop and they did not respond, we will make our demands clear again," he said ahead of the talks with Cui Tiankai, head of the Chinese foreign ministry's department of Asian Affairs. Kodaira and Kenichiro Sasae, the head of the foreign ministry's Asia and Oceania bureau who is leading Japan's delegation, arrived with a heavy security escort, underscoring the tensions between China and Japan.
"Based on the stance of making the East China Sea an ocean of co-operation rather than a sea of conflict, we want to make good efforts to have the other side understand Japan's national interests and stance," Mr Sasae said.
The East China Sea dispute is just one of several irritants in relations between the Asian heavyweights. China was angered earlier this year when Washington and Tokyo declared that Taiwan, which China considers to be a breakaway province, was a mutual security concern.
Then thousands demonstrated across China in April over what many see as Japan's refusal to own up to atrocities committed during its 1931-45 invasion and partial occupation of China, and its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Strains grew when Mr Koizumi defended his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which China sees as a symbol of Japan's militarism.
Despite the deterioration in diplomatic ties, trade between China and Japan has been growing strongly, valued at nearly $170 billion in 2004.
As the East China Sea talks got under way in Beijing, Mr Koizumi visited the Chidorigafuchi tomb for the unknown soldier to take part in a ceremony that will honour war dead. The tomb is less emotive than Yasukuni as it lacks the associations with convicted war criminals.