China warns Japan over forum for ROC independence activists

In a bilateral meeting in Beijing, Yang said he saw Taiwan’s plans for a referendum next March on whether to seek to join the United Nations as a threat, the official said. Yang urged that Japan not provide a forum for independence activists, nor send any “wrong messages”.

Komura said Japan could not support any one-sided attempt to change the current balance of power between Taiwan and China, the official said.

Japan occasionally plays host to politicians from Taiwan, seen by China as a renegade province. Presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou paid a goodwill visit in November, while rival Frank Hsieh plans a similar trip this month, Kyodo news agency said.

The two nations also started talks on trade and economic issues Saturday that are intended to bolster the recent warming of their long-uneasy relations.

The weekend of meetings brings together the largest number of Cabinet officials from the two countries since they opened diplomatic ties 35 years ago and is modeled after similar dialogues China holds with the United States and the European Union.

“We are intensifying the dialogues at a very high political level,” Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mitsuo Sakaba told reporters.

Only two modest agreements were struck — one on a 46.3 billion yen (US$420 million; euro285 million) Japanese loan to China to fund six environmental projects, and the other a treaty to allow the countries’ police and prosecutors to work directly on criminal extradition.

No breakthroughs were reached in a morning meeting of the foreign ministers on Japan’s chief issue, China’s exploitation of a gas field that straddles a contested part of the East China Sea, Sakaba said.

But the talks themselves are a mark of the Asian neighbors’ new willingness to move beyond the divisive disputes over the gas field and other territory, and the tense rivalry for regional influence that chilled relations over the past decade. In recent weeks, the countries’ prime ministers met amiably at a regional summit in Singapore and Chinese naval ships paid the Communist country’s first-ever port call in Japan.

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