Former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama said senior Chinese officials reassured him on a recent visit to Beijing that China, too, desires a "peaceful resolution" to the territorial dispute in the East China Sea and that China is "not seeking hegemony."
His impression from the trip in late January was that the Chinese think highly of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, given his fence-mending efforts during his first stint in office from 2006 to 2007, but remain concerned about his intention to rethink the 1995 Murayama statement, in which the then-prime minister apologized unequivocally for Japan's wartime aggression in Asia.
Murayama said he told Abe this upon returning from the trip.