Japan's top diplomat raises concerns with China's Wang Yi about stabbings, military activity

BEIJING: Japan's new foreign minister raised concerns on Wednesday (Oct 9) about stabbing attacks on Japanese nationals in China and about Chinese military activity during his first phone call with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi since taking office last week.

Last month, a 10-year-old boy enrolled in a Japanese school was fatally stabbed in the city of Shenzhen.

In June, a Chinese national was killed while trying to shield a Japanese mother and her child from an assailant who attacked a bus used by a Japanese school in the city of Suzhou.

The attacks raised concerns about anti-Japan sentiment in China. Beijing said they were isolated incidents and that it continued to protect the safety of all foreigners in China.

Japan's Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya urged China to bolster measures to protect Japanese nationals and a detailed explanation of the schoolboy case, the foreign ministry in Tokyo said in a statement after the phone conversation.

Both parties agreed to continue communicating on the matter.

The ministry said Iwaya had also conveyed "grave concerns over the increasing activities of the Chinese military" and sought an explanation for a breach of Japanese airspace by a Chinese aircraft in August.

It was the first time a Chinese military aircraft had breached Japan's airspace, Japan's defence ministry has said.

The Japanese statement did not say how Wang responded to Iwaya's request.

In its own readout of the phone conversation, Chinese state media said Wang had told Iwaya that Beijing appreciated Tokyo's "positive signals" to steadily develop bilateral relations and looked forward to a "new atmosphere in the Japanese Cabinet and new developments in China-Japan relations".

The tone was relatively upbeat after Wang in July had said bilateral relations were at a critical stage amid thorny issues including territorial claims, food import bans and trade tensions, among other issues.

Wang also called for efforts to maintain peace, "especially to prevent external forces from sowing discord and stirring up regional confrontation", CCTV said, an apparent reference to the United States, which is a key ally of Japan.

"(We) hope Japan will establish an objective, rational and positive and friendly perception of China," Wang told Iwaya, according to the CCTV report.