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Frosty greeting between Xi, Abe | Video | Reuters.com
The iciness of the relationship between China and Japan was plain to see as Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe met for the first time.
For two years, the leaders of China and Japan have refused to meet each other, amid a series of bitter disputes.
And when Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe finally came face-to-face on Monday, on the sidelines of a summit for 24 Pacific Rim leaders in Beijing, disgust was etched on the faces of both men.
Contrary to protocol, Mr Xi made Mr Abe wait to meet him.
And when the Japanese prime minister eventually shuffled forwards to say hello, Mr Xi blanked him, uttering not a word in reply before he turned stony-faced to pose for the cameras, looking like the Japanese prime minister had been sick on his shoes.
Mr Abe, was also unable to summon a smile, instead looking intensely weary.
"It was clearly very awkward," said Feng Wei, a professor of Japanese history at Fudan university in Shanghai. "Of course they were not meeting as individuals, but as heads of state, and the eyes of the world were on them. So their facial expressions could not be very warm. Perhaps this was the only solution."
Both China and Japan have been caught up in nationalistic fervour in recent years, as Mr Xi and Mr Abe seek to project an image of strength. The two countries have been locked in arguments over the sovereignty of a set of islands in the sea between them, and over whether Japan will acknowledge its wartime crimes.
In order to secure the meeting, Mr Abe, whose grandfather was the ruling official in Manchukuo, the area in the north east of China which was annexed by Japan in the Second World War, is believed to have tacitly agreed not to visit the Yasukuni shrine, where 14 Class A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, are buried.
Mr Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun, was a Communist guerrilla who fought against the Japanese in the north west of China.
A four-point agreement hashed out by Chinese and Japanese diplomats last Friday also acknowledged for the first time that China's position on the ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands differs from Japan's.
"I do not think Abe will visit the Yasukuni shrine again as prime minister," said Prof Feng. "Although he could visit later in a personal capacity and of course if he stops going he may lose votes."
After their frosty handshake, the two men spoke for around half-an-hour in a meeting closed to foreign reporters. According to Xinhua, the Chinese state news wire, Mr Xi told his Japanese counterpart that the issue of Japanese war crimes "weighs on the feelings of 1.3 billion people."
Mr Abe, in response, said that while he would respect the four point agreement, "the Japanese side will stick to the same view on past as previous administrations."
Mr Abe also requested a new hotline between the two countries to avoid any clashes between their ships around the disputed islands. "I asked him that we implement a maritime communication mechanism, and I think we will start working on concrete steps toward it," he said.
China's anxiety over agreeing to a meeting between Mr Xi and Mr Abe partly stemmed from the debacle of the last meeting between the two sides, at the same summit in 2012.
When the then president Hu Jintao met with Yoshihiko Noda on the sidelines of the summit in Vladivostok, he gave an ultimatum for Japan not to try to nationalise the ownership of the disputed islands. Just two days later, the Japanese government announced they would buy them anyway.
However, the fraught relationship between the two countries has hit business badly. In the first half of this year, Japanese investment in China plummeted by nearly 50 per cent as Japanese companies began moving their factories to South East Asia.
Additional reporting by Tang Ailin
Video: World's most awkward head of state handshake as Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe meet - Telegraph
