China set to appoint new ambassador to Japan, as Xi Jinping prepares for June visit

China’s top envoy to Tokyo will step down soon, Japanese media reported, as Chinese President Xi Jinping prepares for his first visit to the country in a decade. Citing diplomatic sources, Kyodo and NHK said Beijing had informed Tokyo of its decision to replace Cheng Yonghua, who has served as ambassador since 2010, early next month. Deputy foreign minister Kong Xuanyou, a Japan expert who is in charge of Beijing’s relations with its Asian neighbours, is likely to succeed Cheng, Kyodo reported. The removal of China’s longest serving envoy to Japan comes after a year in which there has been rapprochement in relations between the Asian arch-rivals in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Xi is expected to attend the Osaka summit of the Group of 20 industrial and emerging economies in late June, the first visit to Japan by a top Chinese leader since 2008. Xi last visited Japan in 2009 when he was vice-president. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who made his first official visit to China in October after taking power in 2012, has also invited Xi to make a state visit to Tokyo in the autumn, Japanese media reported earlier. China-Japan ties at ‘historic turning point’ after Abe’s visit Amid trade frictions with Washington, China and Japan have sought to build bridges in recent months despite deep-rooted hostility and resentment over territorial disputes and historical issues, and a bitter rivalry over regional dominance. Analysts believe the diplomatic reshuffle comes at a sensitive time for bilateral ties but should be viewed as a gesture of goodwill by Beijing. Liu Jiangyong, an expert on Japan at Tsinghua University in Beijing, spoke highly of Cheng, a soft-spoken veteran diplomat who turns 65 in September. “It is remarkable that Cheng has served as Chinese ambassador for so long and he has done a tremendous job to help steer bilateral ties through the twists and turns of the past nine years,” he said. As well as the intermittent tensions linked to Japan’s wartime atrocities, relations between Beijing and Tokyo have been mired in territorial disputes over the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, known as Diaoyu in China, in the East China Sea. The two sides have also been at loggerheads in recent years over China’s diplomatic assertiveness and global ambitions, especially following the landmark 2016 international tribunal ruling that denied Beijing’s expansive claims to the South China Sea. Japanese wartime photos strike a nerve in China Liu said he thought the appointment of Kong, a fluent Japanese speaker who was promoted to deputy foreign minister and made Beijing’s top representative on Korean peninsula affairs last year, was a reasonable decision because of his experience in handling Japan issues. Kong, 59, has held various posts at Chinese diplomatic missions in Japan since the mid-1980s. From 2006 to 2011 he was minister at the Chinese embassy in Japan, serving as the top deputy to three Chinese envoys, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Beijing’s current ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai, according to the ministry’s website. Both Liu and Pang Zhongying, a Beijing-based international affairs expert, said that if Kong’s appointment were confirmed one of his first tasks would be making preparations for Xi’s visit to Japan. “The upcoming G20 summit is of special importance for Japan and China, especially at a time of their strained ties with Washington,” Pang said. China should boost ties with Japan to counter hostile US The experts said also that despite the high-level visits and signs of improvement, relations between China and Japan were not yet fully back on track, especially given the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan and Tokyo’s interest in Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy. “Our relations with Japan are still at a crossroads, with a lot of challenges and difficulties ahead,” Liu said. “Despite the political gestures to improve relations, deep-rooted problems remain.” The position of ambassador to Japan is regarded as one of China’s most senior diplomatic postings, with the same rank as a deputy cabinet minister. That level of seniority is shared by Beijing’s envoys to the United Nations and about a dozen countries, including the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, Egypt, India and North Korea. Senior diplomats are usually required to step down at 63, the same retirement age for vice-ministers and deputy provincial officials. How China plans to use infrastructure projects to build bridges with Japan The average tenure of an ambassadorship is less than four years, but Xi’s ambition to project China’s growing economic and military power in Asia and beyond has seen repeated delays in naming successors to top overseas posts. Cui, who passed the statutory retirement age of 65 nearly two years ago, has been asked to postpone his departure due to Beijing’s strained ties with Washington. Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to Britain since 2010, and Li Hui, envoy to Russia since 2009, are also among the country’s longest-serving envoys.