Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) kicked off an Asia tour in Japan yesterday, where a row has broken out over a breach of protocol for his hastily arranged meeting with Emperor Akihito.
Xi, who is widely expected to succeed Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as Chinese president in 2012, is on his first visit to Japan since he took office in March last year.
The vice president was scheduled to meet Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose center-left government took power in September with a promise to seek closer ties with China and Japan’s other neighbors.
PHOTO: AFP
“I am visiting Japan to promote mutual trust, cooperation and friendship,” Xi said in a statement issued shortly after his arrival, when he was greeted by scores of people, many of them Chinese children waving his country’s flag.
Xi is scheduled to meet Akihito at the imperial palace today.
Hatoyama’s government has drawn criticism for extending special treatment to Xi by allowing him to meet the emperor despite China having missed the usual deadline for requesting such an audience.
The Imperial Household Agency normally demands that requests by foreign visitors to meet the emperor be filed at least one month in advance, but Xi’s request for an audience was made on Nov. 26.
Japan says the rule for such early notice was put in place because of concerns over the health of Akihito, 75, who underwent an operation for prostate cancer in 2002.
Former prime minister Shinzo Abe, still an influential figure in the opposition conservative Liberal Democratic Party, lashed out at Hatoyama’s “political use of the emperor” after the government asked the palace last week to bend the usual rules and facilitate the meeting.
“I feel strong resentment,” Abe told reporters. “It’s not too late to ask the Chinese side to drop the plan.”
Hatoyama defended himself, saying the meeting “has major meaning for further progress in Japan-China relations. I don’t think my decision was wrong.”
Under the Japanese Constitution, Akihito and other members of the world’s oldest monarchy serve a largely ceremonial function and are barred from engagement in political activities.
Many Asian countries still hold bitter memories of the past aggression of Japan under Akihito’s father, the late Emperor Hirohito.
The exceptional move to allow Xi’s meeting with the emperor caused a stir in the Japanese media. Some newspapers said Japan may have returned a favor for China’s special treatment of a delegation of more than 600 led by the ruling party’s powerful secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, who was allowed to meet Hu last week.
Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan has pledged stronger ties with Asia and proposed a future East Asian Community with a single currency, along the lines of the EU
The prime minister has also pledged that he and his Cabinet will stay away from Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni war shrine, seen by many other Asian nations as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, after visits there by previous conservative premiers badly harmed Tokyo-Beijing ties.
Xi, in an interview with Japanese media in Beijing on Saturday, said he wants to use his trip to “further develop the strategic, reciprocally beneficial partnership” with Tokyo.
Xi also welcomed Hatoyama’s proposal for a regional community, saying it “reflects the importance the Hatoyama government places on East Asian cooperation.”
After his three-day visit to Japan, Xi will fly to South Korea, Myanmar and Cambodia before returning to China on Dec. 22, officials said.
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