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CHINA has laid out firm conditions for improved ties with Japan, telling Tokyo’s visiting foreign minister that there can be “no ambiguity or vacillation” in historical interpretation and other key matters.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Fumio Kishida that the ties must be based on “respect for history, adherence to commitment, and on cooperation rather than confrontation.”

Relations have gone through “twists and turns in recent years due to reasons best known by Japan,” Wang said, adding that China desires “healthy and stable relations” with its neighbor and key economic partner.

Japan needs to “turn its words into deeds,” he said.

Wang told Kishida that Japan must adhere to commitments laid down in previous agreements and “face up to and reflect upon the history and follow the one-China policy to the letter.”

“No ambiguity or vacillation is allowed when it comes to this important political foundation of bilateral ties,” he said.

As part of a “four-point requirement on improving bilateral ties,” Wang demanded Japan “have a more positive and healthy attitude towards the growth of China, and stop spreading or echoing all kinds of China threat or China economic recession theories.”

Kishida was making the first formal visit to China by a Japanese foreign minister in more than four years, part of an effort to revive a relationship that for years has been economically vital but politically dormant. On Saturday, he also met Premier Li Keqiang.

Li said China is willing to make joint efforts with Japan to strengthen political mutual trust and promote bilateral relations back to the track of normal development. But he stressed that no ambiguity is allowed when it comes to the political foundation for the normalization of relations.

The Japanese side should stick to the path of peaceful development, and match deeds with words that China’s peaceful development is an opportunity, Li said.

Kishida said Japan is willing to adhere to the consensus with China that the two countries are each other’s cooperative partner rather than threat.

Japan is willing to pay mutual respect, strengthen mutual trust, control disputes, and advance the bilateral relations initiated by elder leaders of the two countries and build a Japan-China relations facing toward the future, he said.

He also spoke highly of China’s economic structural reform and voiced willingness for further cooperation.

Despite their economic relationship, many Chinese harbor animosity toward Japan dating from its invasion and occupation in the 1930s and 1940s.

China has also lambasted moves by Japanese conservatives to whitewash Japan’s militaristic past and minimizing World War II atrocities.