Toshihiro Nikai, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will visit China from April 24-29 as a special envoy of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Nikai will attend an international conference -- related to China's "Belt and Road Initiative," which seeks to create a huge economic zone -- to be held in Beijing next Friday. He aims to make preparations ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Japan scheduled for June.
This will be Nikai's first visit to China since he traveled to Beijing in August and September last year. He plans to hold talks with Xi in order to give him a personal letter from Abe. Among the officials who will accompany Nikai are Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), and Yutaka Nagasawa, chairman of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (Zen-Noh).
The government is drawing up a plan to realize Xi's first official visit to Japan as Chinese president around the same time as the Group of 20 summit meeting to be held in Osaka on June 28-29, and to pave the way for welcoming him again as a state guest in this autumn or later. Nikai intends to indirectly support the intergovernmental diplomacy and ensure the current trend toward improving the bilateral relationship continues.
In relation to this, Nikai invited Cheng Yonghua, the Chinese ambassador to Japan who will leave his position shortly, to attend a meeting of his faction held in a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo on Thursday, and thanked him for his services. "The friendly relationship between Japan and China is important. We should continue to make efforts further," Nikai emphasized at the meeting.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
