An agreement this week will lead to the implementation of a long-sought hotline.
The governments of Japan and China have reached an agreement on the implementation of a crisis management and communication mechanism to avoid sea and air clashes in disputed areas of the East China Sea. According to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, the mechanism, which functions as a hotline between the two countries, will soon be operationalized.
The latest agreement, which Japan’s Kyodo news agency described as a “breakthrough,” was the result of a recent two-day meeting of senior diplomatic officials from both sides in Shanghai. Setting aside the accomplishment itself, the agreement on the implementation of the mechanism speaks to slowly improving relations between Japan and China following the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Party Congress, which convened in October. Additionally, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam in November. Despite these signs of improving ties, incidents involving Chinese vessels and aircraft in Japan’s claimed territorial airspace and waters have remained high this year.
According to Kyodo, despite progress, talks over the hotline had been stalled amid disagreements over the mechanism’s applicability to incidents within Japan’s claimed territorial waters and airspace around the Senkaku Islands (defined as the 12-nautical-mile zone around the islands).
