Japan-China (or china-japan) talks

China and Japan are making another attempt to patch up their tattered relations today.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto is holding talks with the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, in Beijing.

Relations between the two Asian powers have been at a 20-year low since violent anti-Japanese demonstrations across China last year.

The governments of these two Asian powers hardly talk to each other.

War legacy

Relations between China and Japan are a huge contradiction.

Japan is now the second biggest investor in China. Beijing is Tokyo's biggest trading partner. Yet the last time a Chinese leader visited Japan was eight years ago.

From China's point of view, it is all Japan's fault - it refuses to face up to its wartime history. The Japanese prime minister's visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine, which honours war dead including those who slaughtered millions of Chinese in World War II, are arrogant and provocative, China says.

From Tokyo's point of view, China is acting the bully, demanding Japan continue its grovelling apologies for events that are now nearly 70 years old.

nurizeko said:

The highlighted paragraphs sum up the whole problem quite nicely

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Mr Hashimoto's visit will be welcomed by many in the region as a step towards a more rational dialogue, but there is still little sign that either of these proud nations is truly ready to start building a new relationship.

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Hiroyuki Nagashima said:

Ryutaro Hashimoto went to meet a Chinese woman (a spy)?

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Japanese politicians are liable to become the target of China's "female ninja" (secret agents). Most famous is a Chinese female interpreter with whom Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto admitted a "personal association" in 1997. She was in charge of intelligence about Japan at Beijing's security bureau.

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Former PM Ryutaro Hashimoto dies​

Former Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has died. Mr Hashimoto was 68.

He died of multiple organ failure in a hospital in Tokyo on Saturday afternoon.

Mr Hashimoto fell ill and underwent surgery at the hospital early last month.

In 1996, Mr Hashimoto became prime minister of the coalition government of his Liberal Democratic Party, Socialist Party, and a small party called Sakigake.

In 1996, his administration and the US government agreed to close the US Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa and return the site to Japan once alternative facilities became available.

Mr Hashimoto carried out reforms in finance, education, and other areas and consolidated government ministries and agencies.

He resigned as prime minister in 1998 to take responsibility for the Liberal Democratic Party's poor performance in the Upper House election.

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