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BEIJING: Chinese President Hu Jintao's begins his five-day visit to Japan on Tuesday amid hopes by both the Chinese and Japanese governments that differences can be overlooked and closer ties fostered.
After welcoming the Olympic torch last week, the Japanese look set to welcome Hu Jintao, the first top Chinese leader to visit Japan in a decade.
But unlike the Olympic flame, sentiments are not exactly running high in a bilateral relationship that is traditionally beset by ongoing problems and a thorny historical legacy.
China and Japan recently found themselves in a dispute involving contaminated dumplings from China's Hebei province. Many Chinese also remember with ill-feelings visits by former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine.
Meanwhile, many Japanese recall with discomfort how China had blocked Japan's bid for a United Nations Security Council seat in recent years.
Moreover, the issue of Japan's wartime atrocities remains unresolved.
Right now, Beijing is worried that the simmering anti-Japanese unrest in China might spin out of control especially during the Olympic Games.
So it’s hardly surprising that both sides are keen to mend fences.
Tokyo said it hopes to repair what it calls fragile sentiments in both countries and Beijing hopes to emphasise contacts with young Japanese, and highlight what it calls common interests.
This need to mend fences is essential, given the broad changes in the two countries over the past ten years.
David Satterwhite, Executive Director of Fulbright Programme Japan and specialist in Northeast Asian politics, said: "On the one hand the continued vitality and strength of Japan, resurgent Japan in an economic sense, and the unquestioned coming of age of the Chinese economy and the strength of the Chinese nation - these two in concert with each other. This is a summit that really captures a dramatic historical shift over the past decade."
Together with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, Mr Hu will sign an accord expanding on a package of environmental and energy conservation aid to China.
But the trickiest part of the visit is probably in the wording of a post-summit statement that deals with Japanese annexation of Manchuria and the invasion and occupation of China during the Second World War.
Chinese activists want a more concrete apology, while Tokyo seems unlikely to give in.
And what is likely to remain unresolved is the ownership of disputed gas fields in the East China Sea which is said to be one of the most difficult territorial issues between the two countries.
Mr Hu's five-day visit will be his longest visit to any foreign country during his tenure as president.
Some analysts said this is also a gesture by Beijing to improve economic ties.
Trade between the two countries rose last year by 12 per cent to US$253 billion and China has replaced the US as Japan's biggest trading partner. - CNA/vm
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