Japan, China to hold finance minister meeting: Aso

Japan and China are aiming to hold a finance ministers' meeting in Beijing in June for the first time in more than three years, Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday.

Such a meeting would further cement the growing impression that Tokyo and Beijing are looking to move past a bitter dispute over history and territory.

"We are trying to hold it, although I don't know the date," Aso told a regular press conference, asked whether such a plan is being organised. Japan will ask for transparency if the issue of the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is brought up in the meeting, Aso said.

The country last week ruled out any immediate plan to join the Beijing-backed institution. Aso's comment comes after news that Ji Bingxuan, a vice-chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, will head to Tokyo on Wednesday for a four-day day trip, leading a delegation from the Communist-controlled Chinese parliament. Japan and China also held security talks last month, their first such dialogue since January 2011.

Tokyo and Beijing are at loggerheads over the sovereignty of an island chain in the East China Sea that Japan administers as the Senkakus, but China claims as the Diaoyus. Relations soured in 2012 when the Japanese government nationalised some of the islands.

Beijing subsequently halted most high-level contacts with Tokyo, and ships and planes from the two sides have shadow-boxed in the area ever since.

The diplomatic ice was broken last November when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping shared a frosty handshake on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

yahoo.com