Tokyo: A delegation of Japanese business leaders will visit China from Tuesday, tasked with playing a role for improving relations between the two neighboring countries.

Nippon Steel Corp. Chairman Kosei Shindo, who also serves as chief of the Japan-China Economic Association, will head the delegation, comprising members of the association, the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren, and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

This is the first mission of Japanese business leaders to China since September 2019, after a hiatus blamed on the COVID-19 crisis.

It is hoped that the visit will help improve the bilateral ties, which have been unfavorable due to China’s blanket import ban on Japanese fishery products introduced soon after the start last August of the discharge of treated water containing tritium, a radioactive substance, into the ocean from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan.

The Japan-China Economic Association sent a delegation to China for the first time in 1975.

After that, such a business delegation had been sent to the country almost every year until 2019, with events such as meetings with Chinese leaders at the times, including Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, taking place.

“The international situation is extremely chaotic currently and may become even more unpredictable,” Keidanren Chairman Masakazu Tokura, who also serves as top adviser for the upcoming delegation, has said.

“At a time like this, it’s important to have proper connections with China, a neighbor of Japan and major power,” Tokura also said. “It would be great if our dialogue (with Chinese business leaders) pays off as a first step.”

JIJI Press