China's Hu says ties with Japan in improvement process: lawmaker

BEIJING, June 19 Kyodo

Chinese President Hu Jintao told a Japanese delegation led by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone on Tuesday he believes the country's ties with Japan are improving but the two countries need to strengthen working-level cooperation, a delegation member said.

''Sino-Japanese relations have entered a process of improvement,'' Takeshi Noda, a lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, quoted Hu as telling the group.

''There is a need to strengthen working-level cooperation. Development of bilateral relations also contributes to the world,'' Noda quoted Hu as saying.

Ties between the two countries, which had been chilly over the past few years, took a turn for the better after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office last September.

Abe visited China shortly after he was appointed premier, marking the resumption of top-level exchanges that had halted under his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Japan in April.

Nakasone, who was prime minister from 1982 to 1987, is known for promoting exchanges between the two countries while he was in office, including the 3,000-member delegation of Japanese which visited China in 1984.

The delegation of the ongoing visit consists of more than 200 people, including the participants of the 1984 delegation and their children.

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