beijing chinese president xi jinping on saturday extended his condolences to japanese prime minister fumio kishida over the demise of shinzo abe japans longestserving prime minister and lauded his positive contributions to improve sinojapanese ties abe 67 died on friday morning after being shot from behind during an election campaign speech near a train station in the western prefecture of nara xi extended his condolences on the sudden and unfortunate passing of abe on behalf of the chinese government and people and himself and expressed sympathies to the family of abe official media reported on saturday he said that abe made efforts to improve chinajapan relations when he was in office and contributed positively to this endeavour adding that he had reached an important common understanding with the former japanese leader on building a chinajapan relationship that meets the needs of the new era xi noted that he stands ready to work with kishida to continue to develop a chinajapan relationship of good neighbourliness friendship and cooperation in accordance with the principles of the four chinajapan political documents xi and his wife peng liyuan also sent a message of condolences to abes widow akie abe staterun china daily reported china is shocked by abes sudden death foreign ministry spokesman zhao lijian said on friday condoling the demise of the former prime minister zhao said abe contributed to the improvement and development of chinajapan relations separated by the east china sea which is part of the western pacific ocean china and japan shared difficult relations throughout their longchequered history historically they fought two bitter warsthe first sinojapanese war 189495 and the second in 193445 during world war ii it was called the asian holocaust as millions of chinese civilians were killed the second war resulted in the nanjing massacre in which thousands of chinese were killed nanjing is a city in eastern china in recent years the relations turned sour over chinas expansive claims over the senkaku islands which beijing calls diaoyu islands in east china sea but at the same time japan remained the most favoured tourist country for millions of chinese who swarm japanese cities every year initially abe pushed forward with a policy to improve ties with china and met president xi jinping in 2014 during his visit to beijing to take part in the apec summit followed by another in 2019 at the g20 summit in osaka in japan but later he became a vocal critic of china calling on beijing to avoid antagonising other nations and stop demanding more territory from its neighbours abe also deepened strategic partnerships with india vietnam and other regional powers as well as eu and uk and also upgraded japans own defence capabilities abe was one of the architects of the quad the us india japan and australia alliance aimed at countering chinas growing influence and military might