China's premier on Wednesday praised the new Democratic Party-led government in Japan, state media reported, 10 days after elections there saw a landslide victory for the centre-left opposition.
"China appreciates the positive attitude of leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) towards relations with China," Premier Wen Jiabao was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.
China "is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation with Japan's new cabinet, enhance mutual trust… and push for the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between China and Japan to continue to develop."
Wen made the comments in a meeting in Beijing with Fujio Mitarai, chairman of both the Japanese Business Federation and of Canon, the photographic and office equipment maker.
Yukio Hatoyama's DPJ won 308 seats in the powerful 480-member lower house in the watershed elections on August 30, ending more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule.
Hatoyama, a US-educated engineer, has indicated that Japan's foreign policy should look more towards Asia and less to the United States, highlighting the fast rise of China as an economic power.
Wen said Japan and China, as the world's number two and three economies, should work together to tackle the financial crisis, Xinhua reported.
"No single country or region alone can recover from the global economic downturn," he was quoted as saying.
Mitarai, who is leading a delegation of 140 executives and officials on a visit to China, said the Japanese business community wanted to work more closely with Beijing on trade, investment and environmental protection.
He added the business community also wanted to participate in regional development programmes in various parts of China, the report said.
The two countries have been working hard to reduce years of simmering tensions stemming largely from Japan's brutal World War II occupation of China.
Under former premier Junichiro Koizumi, who ruled Japan between 2001 and 2006, Tokyo's relations with Beijing deteriorated badly over his repeated visits to a controversial war shrine.
Hatoyama, however, has said he will not visit the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo.
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