Japan sounded China out on holding phone talks between Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Xi Jinping at an early date when the foreign ministers of the two countries met in Beijing earlier this month, sources familiar with the matter said Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi made the proposal during his meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, on April 2, with Tokyo believing summit dialogue is vital to building "constructive and stable" bilateral relations, the sources said.
During the envisioned phone talks, Kishida is expected to call on Xi, who leads the Communist-led government, to release a male Japanese citizen detained in China last month on suspicion of espionage as soon as possible, the sources said.
Beijing has avoided making an immediate response to the request by Japan, but a Chinese diplomatic source said high-level communication between the two governments is "consistently necessary."
Last week, the Japanese Embassy in Beijing had consular access to the detained man who works for pharmaceutical firm Astellas Pharma Inc. Tokyo has repeatedly called for him to be released soon.
Kishida also plans to exchange views with Xi over the war in Ukraine, which was waged by Russia in February 2022, in the run-up to a Group of Seven summit scheduled for May in Hiroshima, according to the sources.
Kishida will preside over the upcoming G-7 summit for three days from May 19 in the western Japan city that is also his constituency. The G-7 leaders will likely confirm their commitment to tackling Russia's aggression against its neighbor.
Kishida, meanwhile, will bring up the issue of Taiwan, a self-ruled democratic island China regards as its territory to be reunified with the mainland, the sources said. Japan has emphasized the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
China conducted military drills for three days through Monday near Taiwan in retaliation for a meeting between Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles last week.
Repeated intrusions by Chinese ships into Japanese waters around the Tokyo-controlled, Beijing-claimed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea and China-Russia joint military activities near Japan are among other expected topics during the Kishida-Xi phone talks.
Hayashi's visit to Beijing was realized after Kishida and Xi agreed to arrange the trip at their summit in Bangkok in November last year.
