Chinese President Xi Jinping showed his reluctance to resolve recent disputes with Tokyo, such as Beijing's detention of Japanese citizens, during his talks with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in November, bilateral sources said Wednesday.
Xi also expressed a negative reaction to Kishida's request to remove a buoy installed by Beijing within Japan's exclusive economic zone near the Senkaku Islands, administrated by Tokyo in the East China Sea, the sources added.
The details of their meeting held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco were not previously known, as neither Tokyo nor Beijing disclosed all of Xi's responses to Kishida.
The November meeting was the first between Kishida and Xi in about a year, and came as ties between Tokyo and Beijing continue to sour with China opposing Japan's release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, starting in August.
After the summit, Japan and China said their two leaders agreed to build "mutually beneficial" bilateral relations based on common strategic interests, even though Beijing has imposed a blanket ban on Japanese seafood import since the water discharge.
Xi was quoted by the sources as telling Kishida that Beijing will deal with its detention of Japanese nationals in accordance with Chinese laws.
As for the buoy placed near the Senkaku Islands, claimed by China, Xi apparently rejected Kishida's call to get rid of it, saying only that the two Asian countries should manage their different views over the East China Sea, the sources said.
Kishida also asked for China's cooperation in addressing past abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea, but Xi responded by saying the deterioration of the situation on the Korean Peninsula is due to the United States, according to the sources.
The leaders, meanwhile, did not discuss Xi's planned trip to Japan, agreed on between the two nations in 2019. Xi had been expected to visit Japan as a state guest around the spring of 2020 but the trip was postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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