Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng to Visit Osaka-Kansai Expo, in Possible Attempt at Warming Relations

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:58 JST, July 7, 2025

China plans to send Vice Premier He Lifeng to the Osaka-Kansai Expo on Friday, when the country is scheduled to have its national day at Expo, according to diplomatic sources. He is a close aide to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Liberal Democratic Party’s secretary general, Hiroshi Moriyama, who is also chairman of the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentarians’ Union, will likely meet with the vice premier in Osaka and ask that Beijing loan giant pandas to Japan.

When Moriyama visited China in April, he asked a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party about borrowing the pandas.

China has tried to improve its relationship with Japan as tensions rise with the United States. By having He visit, it is thought China is seeking to show the importance it places on ties with Japan.

Four pandas were recently returned from Wakayama Prefecture to China, and there are now only two of the bears left in Japan, at the Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo. These two pandas are scheduled to be returned to China by Feb. 20 next year.

The Chinese vice premier will also hold meetings with Japanese business groups, apparently to seek more investments in China and more person-to-person exchanges.

He may encourage the Japanese government to strengthen ties with Beijing, as Japan has been struggling in tariff negotiations with the United States.

Japan plans to dispatch a cabinet-level official to attend China’s national day event at the Expo.

Since March 2023, He has coordinated macro-economic policy for the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and he has also led tariff negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.