Japan FM to meet Chinese counterpart over boy's fatal stabbing

Japanese foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa said on Monday she will meet her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during a visit to New York to discuss the fatal stabbing of a schoolboy.

After the attack last week in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida demanded an explanation and urged China to ensure the safety of Japanese citizens.

"The recent incident in Shenzhen, where a child at a Japanese school was attacked and killed, was very tragic," Kamikawa told reporters at the airport in Tokyo ahead of the trip.

"We will... strongly urge China to provide a clear explanation of the facts and ensure the safety of Japanese people, especially children," she said, according to Japan's foreign ministry.

She said Japan will spend 43 million yen ($300,000) to immediately ramp up the security of Japanese schools in China.

Kamikawa is traveling to New York from Monday for three days to attend the United Nations general assembly.

Japan's vice foreign minister, meanwhile, discussed the stabbing with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Monday.

China's foreign ministry said the two sides "affirmed the need to work with each other to handle this unfortunate incident properly and calmly".

They "agreed to remain in communication to avoid isolated and individual cases having an impact on bilateral relations", ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular press conference.

Last week, Beijing expressed "regret and sadness" for what it called an isolated incident that "could happen in any country".

Japanese media reported that the boy was a 10-year-old Japanese national living in Shenzhen, while Beijing's foreign ministry said his parents were Japanese and Chinese citizens, respectively.

Police detained a 44-year-old man suspected of stabbing the child. Lin said Monday that the case was still "under investigation".

While it remains unclear if the attack was politically motivated, it happened on September 18, the anniversary of the 1931 "Mukden incident" or "Manchurian incident", which is known in China as a day of national humiliation.

In June, a Japanese mother and child were injured in another knife attack in Suzhou near Shanghai, which China's foreign ministry described at the time as an "isolated incident".

A 55-year-old Chinese woman died attempting to stop the assailant and was honoured by the local government after her death.

Relations between the countries have worsened as China grows more assertive in territorial disputes in the region, and as Japan boosts security ties with the United States and its allies.

But Beijing announced last week it would "gradually resume" importing seafood from Japan after a ban in August last year over the release of water from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Last week, Japan said a Chinese aircraft carrier sailed between two Japanese islands near Taiwan for the first time.

Tokyo slammed the incident as "totally unacceptable", while China said it had complied with international law.

© Agence France-Presse