Taking its cue from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's largely successful fence-mending trip to China, Japan will formally inaugurate a blue-ribbon troupe to prepare for an extravaganza commemorating the 30th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties.

It's not a real group of stage performers, of course. It's a government-organized committee comprising a host of Japanese leaders in private-sector circles, especially from business.

According to government sources, the committee -- headed by Nobuyuki Idei, Sony Corp.'s charismatic chairman and chief executive officer, and including many other business and other private-sector leaders -- will hold its inaugural meeting in Tokyo at the end of November.

The committee will be responsible for the implementation of various events next year in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the two neighbors' establishment of diplomatic ties. Japan and China have officially designated 2002 as "Peoples' Exchange Year" to further promote friendship at the grass-root level.

In 1972, Japan switched its diplomatic recognition to communist-ruled China from then Nationalist-controlled Taiwan, which Beijing still regards as a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland, even by force if necessary.

The sources said the committee will have 10 vice chairmen, including Toyota Motor Corp. President Fujio Cho, Nippon Steel Corp. President Akira Chihaya, Orix Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Yoshihiko Miyauchi and NTT DoCoMo Inc. Chairman Kouji Ohboshi.

Among the other vice chairmen will be Keita Asari, Shiki Theatre Co. Chairman, and Yoshimi Ishikawa, a writer. Ishikawa will concurrently serve as head of the high-powered committee's planning subcommittee, the sources said.

China will also launch a similar committee, probably by the end of this year, to implement various events of its own under the joint project, the sources said.

The Japanese committee's long list of prominent business figures apparently reflects strong expectations in Japanese business circles that China, the world's most populous country of some 1.3 billion people, will become a lucrative market once it joins the World Trade Organization later this year or early next year.

As a member of the WTO, the Geneva-based body that regulates global commerce, China has to open its economy to more foreign competition through lowered import tariffs and eased restrictions on foreign investments. China already ranks seventh globally in terms of gross domestic product.

The long-awaited formal launch of the Japanese committee will come several weeks after Koizumi's whirl-wind visit to Beijing on Oct. 8. Koizumi and top Chinese leaders, including President Jiang Zemin, agreed to work together to improve bilateral ties, which had been in a declining spiral since he took office in April. They also agreed to make the Peoples' Exchange Year project a success.

Koizumi and Jiang met again on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum's summit in Shanghai on Sunday and agreed to take advantage of the diplomatic ties' 30th anniversary next year to promote bilateral exchanges in various fields, including sports, culture, politics and economic cooperation.

Before Koizumi's Beijing trip, Sino-Japanese relations had plunged to what Japanese officials said were their lowest point in the 30 years since diplomatic ties were established, due to the Japanese education authorities' approval of a controversial history textbook in April and Koizumi's visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine in August.

The textbook, intended for junior high schools and authored by a group of nationalists, came under fierce criticism from Japan's Asian neighbors for lacking details of Japan's military atrocities before and during World War II.

Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine sparked an angry response from China and South Korea because Class-A war criminals, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, are enshrined there alongside Japan's war dead.

Without the flareups over the historical issues, the Japanese committee would have been inaugurated last summer, the sources said.