Tokyo, December 10: Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Thursday urged China to make progress on democracy, just as China announced a rising leader will visit Japan in a sign of deepening ties between the two biggest Asian powers.
Hatoyama, an advocate of closer ties with China, could irritate Beijing with his comments at the Bali Democracy Forum in Indonesia, which brings together officials from across Asia, including China.
“There is great expectation that China will continue to make progress, as a responsible power, on the issue of democracy and human rights,” Hatoyama told the audience, in remarks reported by the foreign ministry.
China consistently rejects foreign calls for political relaxation of its one-party Communist administration as meddling in its affairs. It says the country has its own version of democracy and human rights suited to Chinese conditions.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping will visit Japan, as well as South Korea, Cambodia and Myanmar, from Dec. 14 to 22, the Foreign Ministry announced in Beijing.
Spokeswoman Jiang Yu gave no precise dates for Xi’s Japan visit, but said it came at a significant time.
“This is the first visit by a Chinese state leader since the new Japanese government took office,” Jiang told a regular news conference in Beijing.
“We hope to increase political mutual trust, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, increase friendly feelings between the people of both nations, and promote the continuous development of bilateral strategic relations.”
Hatoyama took office in September, after his Democratic Party swept the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party from power.
POSSIBLE SUCCESSOR
Xi, 56, is tipped to succeed Hu Jintao as Party chief and state president in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Xi’s Asian tour follows on from a trip across Western Europe in October and appears to be another step in burnishing his diplomatic credentials to succeed Hu.
Japan and China are the world’s second and third biggest economies, between them accounting for 15 percent of global economic output.
Hatoyama made his comments as a 140-strong delegation of lawmakers from his party set off on a trip to Beijing.
Hatoyama’s predecessor as leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, Ichiro Ozawa, departed with what the conservative Sankei newspaper said was the biggest group of lawmakers to make a trip abroad.
Ozawa, still seen by many voters as Japan’s most powerful politician, plans to improve ties with Chinese government officials, the Sankei said.
Both the Nikkei business daily and the Sankei criticised the China visit at a time when Japan’s ties with the United States are strained by a row over the siting of a U.S. Marine base.
Relations between China and Japan, often marked by spats over territorial and other issues, have been generally positive since Hatoyama’s landslide election victory.
In contrast with previous prime ministers, he has stressed the importance of deepening ties with countries that have different values. Hatoyama also pledged to avoid Yasukuni, a shrine to war dead seen by many in Asia as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
—Agencies