The fourth-highest ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, Yu Zhengsheng, has expressed hope for improved ties with Japan but said this depends on whether Tokyo will officially acknowledge that a dispute exists over the Senkaku Islands.
During a meeting in Beijing on Friday with a Japanese delegation headed by senior opposition lawmaker Takahiro Yokomichi, Yu suggested it will be difficult to arrange a summit between the two countries unless the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "admits that there is a dispute" over the uninhabited chain in the East China Sea.
The meeting between the group of Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers, led by Yokomichi, a former Lower House speaker, and Yu was arranged about two weeks ahead of the first anniversary of the central government's move to nationalize the Senkakus.