The handshake in Beijing between Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe marks an important moment in the hitherto fraught relationship between China and Japan. The Chinese president and Japanese prime minister talked on Monday for only 25 minutes on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit. Judging by the body language, their encounter could not have been more frosty. But for the past two years, relations between the two governments have been minimal, bringing both close to armed conflict. That these two men have now had the sense to meet, however briefly, is something to be welcomed far beyond the Asian continent.
China and Japan are the second and third largest economies in the world. But ever since Mr Xi became China’s paramount leader in March 2013, he has refused to meet Mr Abe. Beijing feels it has a legitimate claim over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea which are owned by Japan (and known as Diaoyu in Chinese). China is also infuriated by a visit that Mr Abe paid last December to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, a memorial to Japan’s war dead which includes the “souls” of 14 convicted class A war criminals. For Beijing, Mr Abe is a revisionist leader who denies Japan’s military past.
Japan has much to complain about, too. Mr Xi appears to have consolidated his power within China by stoking anti-Japanese sentiment and sending regular naval and paramilitary patrols into contested waters in the East China Sea. But Mr Abe has for some time been signalling his wish to meet Mr Xi at this week’s Apec gathering. The Chinese recognised that a refusal would appear surly and petulant.