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Japanese lawmaker Toshihiro Nikai and President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing yesterday. Photo: Reuters

President Xi Jinping calls for friendly cooperation at Sino-Japanese event in Beijing

President also calls for more exchanges between two nations' young to improve ties

Xi Jinping

President Xi Jinping has warned against attempts to distort history in Japan as he met an influential lawmaker from the country's governing party yesterday.

Xi and Toshihiro Nikai attended a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing aimed at fostering friendship between the people of the two countries.

Xi said in a speech that China would never accept words or actions by Japanese leaders that distort or embellish the country's war-time history and voiced criticism over Japan's past militarism.

He also called for more exchanges between the younger generation of the two countries, adding that good Sino-Japan ties could benefit not only Asia but the whole world.

"The future of Sino-Japan relations are in the hands of the people of the two countries," the state-run China News Services quoted Xi as saying.

Nikai, 76, handed a personal letter from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Xi during the event.

The meeting came after Beijing renewed a plea for Japan to face up to its militarism in Asia during the second world war after Abe's wife visited the Yasukuni shrine to Japan's war dead, which also commemorates convicted war criminals.

Nikai, a seasoned lawmaker from the Liberal Democratic Party, is heading a 3,000-strong delegation to China on a seven-day visit.

The trip is also partly aimed at increasing Japanese tourism to China.

Known among his fellow lawmakers in the Liberal Democratic Party for his good relations with Beijing, Nikai said he hoped to see the number of Japanese tourists to China increase to further boost ties between the two countries.

Nikai held talks with the head of the China National Tourism Administration, Li Jinzao, on Friday.

On Thursday he held talks with the Guangdong provincial Communist Party chief Hu Chunhua.

Xinhua said the delegation, made up of lawmakers, local government officials and representatives from the tourism industry, was divided into 80 teams who will visit Beijing, Tianjin, plus Hebei and Liaoning provinces.

Buoyed by the strength of China's currency against the yen, the number of Chinese visitors to Japan in one month topped 400,000 for the first time in April, according to the Japan National Tourism Organisation.

Demand among Japanese tourists to travel to China has tailed off since hitting a record high of nearly four million visits in 2007. Some analysts have blamed the slump on the increasingly strained ties between the two countries.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Xi warns Japan against distorting wartime past
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