Japan tries to improve relations with China while the Philippines wants to bring them to court
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A member of Japan’s coalition government arrived in Beijing on Tuesday carrying a letter for the head of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, from the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to try to help calm the escalating dispute between the two countries over contested islands in the East China Sea, Japanese officials said.
Separately, the Philippines announced Tuesday that it would formally challenge China’s claims in the South China Sea before a United Nations tribunal that oversees the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
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The Filipino action appears largely symbolic since China would have to agree to submit to the tribunal as arbitrator. They have no intention of doing so. I haven't paid attention to the situation at Scarborough recently, but the Chinese have been quite aggressively defending their claim. They have erected a fence across the main lagoon to keep out Filipino fishermen and continue to patrol in the area after withdrawing briefly in response to a US-led effort for both sides to stand down last year.
The Abe government sent Yamaguchi Natsuo as the bearer of the letter. He belongs to the New Komeito Party, a coalition member described by Perlez as less hawkish than Abe and his LDP colleagues. We do not yet know whether any Chinese officials will meet with him in person.
A less optimistic take on this event is that Abe is expecting his overture to be rejected providing further justification for the hawks in his Government to escalate matters.