China's Xi, Japan's Abe Hold First Meeting

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Monday for their first talks since they took power in the two neighboring nations. Abe and Xi met in Beijing on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, with the Chinese leader saying after the meeting that stable bilateral ties were in the interest of both China and Japan, according to Reuters. "It was the first step for improving relations by returning to the starting point of mutually beneficial relations based on common strategic interests," Abe said following the meeting, according to Agence France-Presse. Tensions have run high between Japan and China recently, in part due to rising tensions from their territorial dispute over a strategic but uninhabited island group called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese.