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PLA vessel heads for historic Japan visit

Port call a further sign of improved relations

A PLA warship is heading to Japan for a historic visit aimed at easing the doubts and suspicions that remain between the nations despite improved ties.

The guided missile destroyer Shenzhen yesterday left its base in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, and is due to arrive in Japan on Wednesday for a four-day visit, Xinhua said.

The port call is seen as a major breakthrough in post-war Sino-Japanese military exchanges and a further sign of an easing in the often tense relations.

Sino-Japanese expert Gao Hong said the port call could help China erase the humiliation inflicted by Japanese militarists last century.

'It's very significant for the PLA naval ship to pay a visit to Japan in an equal and friendly posture,' said Professor Gao, the director of Japanese politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Japanese Studies.

'There are so many areas in Sino-Japanese bilateral relations but defence and military exchanges are the most backward sector. The port call has been discussed since the 1990s, but was delayed several times due to different kinds of diplomatic disputes between the two countries.'

In 2000, then Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori and premier Zhu Rongji agreed to realise reciprocal warship visits at an early date.

But Beijing unilaterally cancelled a planned inaugural call by one of its naval vessels after former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including 14 class A war criminals from the second world war.

The present visit was finally agreed on in August when Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan met then Japanese defence minister Masahiko Komura in Tokyo.

Xinhua said the People's Liberation Army warship would be opened to the Japanese public.

But Antony Wong Dong, president of the International Military Association in Macau, said the Japanese should be disappointed by the visit because the Shenzhen warship was not the type Japan had hoped for.

'Japan wanted another more advanced type of vessel such as the Lanzhou class modern warship,' Mr Wong said.

'The Lanzhou ship is the most powerful domestically made vessel and has attracted a lot of interest from military experts because little is known about it.'

The Shenzhen is an experimental battle vessel with some outdated equipment and the warship has made nearly 30 overseas trips since its launch in 1999.

A Japanese naval vessel would also visit China as part of the exchange programme but Mr Wong predicted that Japan would not send its Aegis destroyer, the warship Chinese military experts were keen to see.

A Shanghai-based military analyst said the Shenzhen's trip to Japan would be just a symbolic visit.

'It's impossible for both countries to reveal the most advanced weapons to each other,' the expert said. 'Both China and Japan are anxious about each other's fast military development in recent years.'

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