China Premier Li to visit Hokkaido as Sino-Japan ties warm up
Leader expected to join a conference involving local political chiefs on first official visit to Japan by a Chinese premier since 2011
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is expected to visit Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido next month, in a sign of warming relations between Asia’s two biggest economies.
Li is expected to attend a trilateral summit in Tokyo with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts early next month before heading north to join local political leaders for a conference.
Li will be the first Chinese premier to make an official trip to Japan since Wen Jiabao visited in 2011. During his trip, Wen visited Fukushima prefecture and other areas hit by the deadly earthquake and tsunami in March that year.
The last time a Chinese leader or a government head visited Hokkaido, a popular destination for Chinese tourists, was in 2008 when then president Hu Jintao attended an international summit.
Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, also visited Hokkaido in 1998 as China’s state leader and offered a piece of calligraphy calling on the two countries to be good neighbours.
Jiang Yuechun, a Japan specialist at the China Institute of International Studies, said many non-governmental cultural and arts from Hokkaido had fostered goodwill and close ties with people in China despite a chill in official relations between the two countries.