Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's key foreign policy adviser Shotaro Yachi visited Beijing a few days before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings closed last week. His mission was to arrange a meeting between Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC talks.

Yachi and his Chinese colleagues burnt the midnight oil to produce an accord that could set the stage for a meeting between the two leaders. That four-point agreement in itself represented shared willingness to improve the strained relations.

The resulting 25-minute one-on-one talk between Xi and Abe on Nov 10, their first in more than two and a half years, was not intended to solve the problems that exist in the two countries' relations; it was supposed to help the relationship get back on a more positive track.