China VP to visit Japan’s former ‘iron city’

JAPAN: China’s Vice President Xi Jinping was wrapping up a three-day Japan visit Wednesday with a trip to a former heavy industry centre that has cut down on pollution and developed a robotics sector.

Xi, who is expected to succeed Hu Jintao as President in 2012, was due to visit the southwestern city of Kitakyushu before travelling to South Korea on a regional tour that will also take him to Cambodia and Myanmar.

His trip to Japan came as the two Asian neighbours seek to strengthen a relationship that has often been troubled.

Xi met Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada in Tokyo on Wednesday before leaving for his final stop in Japan, Kitakyushu city in Fukuoka prefecture.

Okada told him that “Kitakyushu was once called ‘the city of iron’ but it has overcome the problem of pollution and is a good model case.”

Officials there were scheduled to brief Xi on the city’s environmental policies and to show him Yaskawa Electric Corp., a leading developer and manufacturer of industrial robots. China, expected soon to overtake Japan as the world’s number two economy, struggles with large-scale pollution from its heavy industry, coal plants and cars and is now the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.

During his meeting with Okada, Xi thanked him for “the thorough preparation for my visit” and said that “in the audience with His Imperial Majesty yesterday, I was able to have a friendly talk with him.” TOKYO, Wednesday, AFP