The foreign ministers of China and Japan have held talks ahead of a hoped-for meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after a more than two-year freeze in high-level contacts, the Associated Press reports.

Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida were believed to be hammering out arrangements for the Abe-Xi meeting in talks Saturday, Nov 8, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing.

The talks came a day after the sides issued a joint statement saying they'd agreed to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues. China froze high-level contacts more than two years ago amid a dispute over uninhabited East China Sea islands and other contentious issues.

Japanese media reports said the Wang-Kishida meeting lasted about an hour but gave no word on the outcome.