Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Sunday in Vietnam with a Taiwanese politician, hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned him not to break with the past consensus on what Beijing regards as a renegade province.
Abe held a 30-minute meeting with James Soong, head of the People First Party and Taiwan's special envoy to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' meeting, on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Danang, Vietnam, according to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo.
After meeting with Soong, Abe left Vietnam later in the day, flying to Manila where he was scheduled to meet with Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.