Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji arrives today for a six-day official visit, hoping to improve China's standing in the eyes of the Japanese people and nurture a new bilateral relationship through enhanced economic cooperation.
Zhu's visit, which follows the July 1999 visit to Beijing by the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, comes after a recent heightening of tensions over Chinese marine research activities and naval operations within Japan's exclusive economic waters.
When Foreign Minister Yohei Kono visited Beijing in August, the two nations agreed to create a framework for advance notification of research operations in each other's economic waters, but the details of the plan, such as the scope of the activities, have yet to be hammered out.