Meanwhile, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday suggested a summit with China would improve a relationship that has been badly troubled for months.The latest sign of a possible thaw came the day Japan’s cabinet approved a rise in defence spending for the first time in over a decade, explicitly aimed at beefing up defence of a contested island chain. The cabinet approved a $52 billion military budget, a boost in both financial and personnel resources for the first time in years, amid an ongoing territorial row with China.

The budget plan, which will now go before parliament for approval, is 40 billion yen ($441 million) or about 0.8 percent up on the previous year to 4.75 trillion yen ($52 billion), defence ministry officials said. It also came as Japan’s already well-equipped coastguard said it was creating a special unit with 10 new large patrol boats and a 600-strong force to oversee the East China Sea archipelago. “A high-level meeting should be held because there is a problem. If necessary, there might be a need to build the...

relationship again, starting with a summit meeting,” Abe told Nippon Television. Asia’s two largest economies have been at diplomatic daggers drawn since Tokyo nationalised the Senkakus in September. Japan insisted its move to take formal ownership of islands it controls was nothing more than administrative, transferring the title deeds from an individual to the state