TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday at an APEC gathering in Bangkok, Tokyo’s top government spokesman said Monday.

“Prime Minister Kishida is scheduled to hold a Japan-China summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 17th, on the occasion of the APEC summit,” Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.

The leaders spoke on the phone in October 2021 after Kishida’s election, but this will be their first in-person meeting.

Xi last held face-to-face talks with a Japanese prime minister in December 2019, when he met Shinzo Abe in Beijing.

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China and Japan marked 50 years of diplomatic relations in September, but there was little celebration of the anniversary, given the neighbours’ frosty ties over territorial disputes and other issues.

The world’s second and third-largest economies are key trading partners, and before the Covid-19 pandemic, there had been plans for Xi to make a state visit to Japan.

Relations have significantly soured since as Beijing bolsters its military, projects power regionally and beyond and takes a harder line on territorial rivalries.

Chinese missiles fired during massive military drills around Taiwan in August are believed to have fallen within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and Tokyo has protested what it calls growing aerial and maritime violations in recent months.

Japan also regularly complains about Chinese activity around the disputed Tokyo-controlled Senkaku islands, which Beijing claims and calls the Diaoyus.

The war in Ukraine has only deepened the divide, with Japan backing Western allies opposed to Russia’s invasion while Beijing avoids criticising Moscow.

The conflict has refocused attention on whether China might try to forcibly reunite Taiwan with the mainland, prompting Kishida to warn that the invasion of Ukraine “could be East Asia tomorrow”.