Xi Jinping meets Panetta, blames Japan for making trouble
Staff Reporter 2012-09-20 15:08
Panetta meets Xi on Wednesday. (Photo/Xinhua)
Xi Jinping, China's leader-in-waiting, blamed Japan as the troublemaker behind the territorial dispute between the two countries over islands in the East China Sea when he met Leon Panetta, the US secretary of defense, on Sept. 19, reports our sister newspaper China Times.
Panetta told the BBC that Xi, who has resurfaced following a two-week absence from public view at the start of the month, was "very healthy, in good shape [and] very much engaged. His mind was great."
The US defense chief said Xi appeared to be well-informed and committed to improving US-China relations. The dispute over the Diaoyutai (Diaoyu or Senkaku) islands was one of the major issues discussed in their meeting, initially scheduled for 45 minutes but which went on for an hour.
In a recap of 20th century history, Xi blamed the Japanese for launching its invasion of China 81 years ago by concocting the Mukden Incident on Sept. 18, 1931 as a pretext for the occupation of the country's three northeastern provinces. The Imperial Japanese Army later expanded the war to the rest of China in 1937 and to the entire Asia-Pacific region by 1941, when the United States also became the victim of Japanese militarism, Xi said. Under the Cairo Declaration concluded by China's leader Chiang Kai-shek together with Roosevelt and Churchill in November 1943, a defeated Japan would not be allowed to keep any territory beyond its four main islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku.
The islands at the center of the dispute, which are claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan, were handed over to Japan together with Okinawa when the United States returned the island prefecture to Japanese administration in 1972.
Xi said the policy of the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, to nationalize three of the islands is in direct violation of the Potsdam Declaration of July 1945, which Japan ultimately accepted with its final surrender. He told Panetta that the policy of the Japanese government regarding the disputed islands will only provoke further territorial disputes with its neighbors.
Panetta said that the policy of the United States is to remain neutral in the dispute between China and Japan, and urged Beijing and Tokyo to work together to find a peaceful solution. He also said that China is not the target of the US military redeployment to the Asia-Pacific and invited the People's Liberation Army to take part in the next RIMPAC naval exercises in 2014.
