President Xi Jinping played the unlikely role of potential peacemaker between two feuding US allies yesterday as he met the leaders of Japan and South Korea separately in Beijing.
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, travel to Chengdu, south-west China, for a bilateral session of their own today as well as trilateral talks with Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier.
The flurry of diplomatic activity has given Beijing a rare chance to help smooth a festering political and economic dispute between Tokyo and Seoul, which has complicated long-running talks to forge a free trade area between east Asia’s three big economies.