China rejects Japanese youths` visit to Shanghai Expo amid tensions

TOKYO, Sept. 20 Kyodo -
Japan's Foreign Ministry said Monday the planned visit of a group of 1,000
young Japanese to the Shanghai World Expo has been postponed as the Chinese
side rejected it amid strained bilateral ties following the recent ship
collision off disputed islands.
It is unusual for one side of a bilateral exchange program promoted by the two
governments and endorsed at a bilateral summit to defy its fulfillment, and is
believed to be an additional retaliatory step against Tokyo's arrest of a
Chinese skipper following the suspension of ministerial and higher-level
exchanges.
The group -- about 620 college students and 380 other young people -- was
formed in response to a proposal by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at his meeting
with then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in May that 1,000 young Japanese visit
the expo in order to expand personal and cultural exchanges.
According to the ministry, the Chinese host organization, which has close ties
with the Chinese Communist Party's youth group, notified the Japanese Embassy
in China on Sunday night that it is ''inappropriate to carry out the goodwill
exchange program in the current atmosphere.''
Tokyo in response filed a protest with Beijing the same night, saying through
the embassy, ''It is quite inappropriate and regrettable for the Chinese side
to make such a decision shortly before the departure (of the Japanese group),''
it said.
Organized at Chinese expense, the group was scheduled to leave Japan on Tuesday
to visit the Shanghai Expo and interact with young Chinese before returning
home Friday.
While China said the postponement was due to anti-Japan demonstrations stirred
by the collision of a Chinese fishing boat with Japanese patrol vessels off the
disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, some consider it a retaliatory
measure following Sunday's court decision in Japan to allow the Chinese's
detention extended.
The skipper Zhan Qixiong will now be held for another 10 days through Sept. 29
on suspicion of illegally fishing in Japanese waters and
deliberately causing his vessel to collide with a Japanese patrol boat pursuing it
near the Senkaku Islands, administered by Japan but also claimed by China and
Taiwan.
In a related development, a group of six youths threw around several bricks
onto the premises of a Japanese school in Hangzhou, capital of the eastern
province of Zhejiang, on Sunday night, and four activists unfurled a banner
demanding the skipper's release Monday in front of the Japanese consulate in
Shanghai.
==Kyodo
2010-09-20 22:34:33