Before the extraordinary Diet session convened on October 5, a Japanese government official received a message from the Chinese side about Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's policy speech, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. The message asked Tokyo to return to the "Abe line" — the language Shinzo Abe used in his own policy speech in September 2014 to signal a strong will to repair Japan-China relations.
Relations had been described at the time as the worst since the two countries normalized ties in 1972, after Japan's nationalization of the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture in 2012 and Abe's visit to Yasukuni Shrine in 2013. After behind-the-scenes coordination that included former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, Abe avoided the disputed issues in his speech and used the phrase "build a stable friendship" for the first time, calling for an early summit. Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Beijing in November 2014.
The Prime Minister's Office read the message as a Chinese signal toward improving relations and began weighing a response. It worked to include in the speech a willingness to move ties forward through cooperation in areas such as the economy, in line with the Abe line.
Takaichi then changed the draft her staff had prepared. The Mainichi Shimbun's published text breaks off at that point, and the rest of what she altered is not given.
Relations have remained deteriorated since Takaichi's Diet answer on a Taiwan contingency a year ago. A deputy director of China's information bureau criticized that answer again on November 6, according to the paper's related coverage.