Former Japanese prime minister calls for dialogue with China

Former Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama called for more political dialogue between China and Japan, and accused the current Japanese government of playing up ideological differences to "encircle" Beijing together with the US, according to an article on South China Morning Post website on July 4.

The article said that tensions between Japan and China were further strained after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida drew an analogy between the Russia-Ukraine conflict and China's "increasingly assertive" behavior in Asia.

Yukio Hatoyama said at the World Peace Forum hosted by Tsinghua University that the Japanese government had played up "differences and values", leading to an escalation of confrontation between the two sides.

As a firm US ally, Hatoyama noted, Japan has played an active role in several US-led multilateral mechanisms, including the Quad and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The result, Hatoyama added, was "a de facto encirclement of China."

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Tokyo. Yukio Hatoyama expressed that the US, Japan and China should work harder to control tensions, especially on the Taiwan question.

He said Fumio Kishida's remarks about China were "completely different?with reality" and he urged the US and Japan to reaffirm the one-China policy to reduce the prospect of conflict across Taiwan .

Tensions between China and Japan have worsened over the past year as Tokyo loudly backed Taiwan and took what Beijing sees as "provocative" moves, such as sending a current defense official to Taiwan, according to the article.