Chinese Premier Meets with Japanese FM

Chinese Premier Meets With Japanese FM

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji expressed the hope Wednesday that his upcoming official visit to Japan would lift mutual cooperation between the two countries to a new level.

Zhu told visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono during their meeting that he wants to meet with people from both the government and the public during his visit in order to help deepen mutual understanding and trust.

It is not only in the fundamental interest of the Chinese and Japanese peoples, but also conducive to the peace and development in the region and the world for China and Japan, two close neighbors, to develop friendly relations, the premier said.

He said during President Jiang Zemin's visit to Japan in 1998, both sides drafted a framework of friendly cooperation for peace and development, which had laid the foundation for bilateral ties in the 21st century. Also this May, President Jiang delivered an important speech on Sino-Japanese relations, he added.

He said the present friendly relations are hard won, therefore the younger generation should get known about the history of Sino-Japanese relations and deeply treasure such friendly ties so as not to cause misunderstanding and "unfriendly voices", Zhu said.

China has started with its new development strategy and Japan is undergoing an economic recovery, Zhu said, pointing out the two economies are strongly complementary and there are broad prospects for their cooperation.

Kono agreed with Zhu on bilateral ties, saying friendly cooperation is now the main trend of bilateral relations. China has broad development potential, and its development is of critical importance to the prosperity of Asia, he said.

He said Japan highly stresses its relations with China. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and the Japanese people are looking forward to Premier Zhu's visit to Japan, which, he believes will further push forward bilateral ties.