Tokyo ramps up diplomacy

Senior Japanese politicians are visiting China for talks with Chinese counterparts with the hope of easing current tensions over the disputed Diaoyu Islands.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei confirmed that China's deputy foreign minister Fu Ying held a meeting on Monday with Japanese senator Kosaka Kenji, who was on a private visit to Beijing.

The two exchanged the views of the public in both countries, and Fu stressed that China welcomes Japanese society's efforts to promote China-Japan cooperation at a difficult time, Hong said.

Kenji was the first parliament member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to visit China since Shinzo Abe returned to power in December, and Kenji's visit was seen as the prelude to an official visit to China by Abe's special envoy Masahiko Komura.

At the same time, Japanese former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama started a three-day private visit to China on Tuesday.

In a speech last week, Hatoyama, former leader of Japan's opposition Democratic Party of Japan, underlined that there were "no territorial disputes between Japan and China" during his tenure in 2009-10.

"China has maintained normal exchanges with Japanese ruling and opposition parties as well as friendly civil groups from Japan, which will facilitate the communication and the healthy development of the two countries' relations," Hong said in a regular press briefing.

Analysts said healthy communications will help the two countries avoid slipping into war triggered by unexpected frictions.

"Although China and Japan haven't yet found common ground on solving the Diaoyu crisis, the two must share a view on not letting any incident escalate to war," said Ni Feng, an expert on East Asia security affairs from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Japan scrambled fighter jets again on Tuesday after it spotted a Chinese maritime surveillance plane over the East China Sea, according to the Kyodo News Agency.

An official from Japan's defense ministry told the Global Times that Japan's air force will only fire back once its jets was fired upon in line with Japan's self-defense laws.

US and Japanese fighter jets on Tuesday carried out joint air exercises, an official said, days after Chinese and Japanese military planes shadowed each other near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

The five-day exercise involves six US FA-18 fighters and around 90 American personnel, along with four Japanese F-4 jets and an unspecified number of people, the official said.

It comes weeks after hawkish new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won an election landslide following campaign promises to re-invigorate Tokyo's security alliance with Washington and take a more robust line against Beijing.

Both Japan and China claim sovereignty over the uninhabited Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

A heated debate on how to deal with Chinese planes continued in Japan since China for the first time sent a maritime surveillance plane to fly over the disputed islands on December 13.

In response to reports that Japan might fire warning shots at hostile planes into its "airspace," an official from China's defense ministry told the Global Times on Tuesday that warning shots shouldn't be regarded as a declaration of war.

However, LüFuhai, a researcher on Japan's history, warned that China must stay highly vigilant toward Japan's domestic political moves.

"When Japan decided to launch a war, it never declared it," he said, adding that Japan's public sentiment has been mobilized by Abe's hard-line policy toward China.

As part of a program of mapping its territorial islands and reefs, China is to carry out a geographical survey of the Diaoyu Islands after finishing the mapping of islands located within 100 kilometers off China's coastline, according to a document issued by the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation.