The first Japanese warship to visit China since the Second World War docked in a southern Chinese port yesterday in a symbolic breakthrough in relations between East Asia’s two biggest powers.

The 4,650-tonne destroyer Sazanami pulled into Zhanjiang, a Chinese naval port in the southern province of Guangdong, with a cargo of relief supplies for victims of last month’s Sichuan earthquake. The Sazanami and its 240 crew will stay in China for five days as part of a ground-breaking military exchange that also involved a Chinese missile destroyer visiting Japan in November — the first Chinese ship to do so since 1891.

The crew of the Sazanami, including members of a musical band, delivered 300 blankets and 2,600 emergency food items, the first aid to be delivered to China by Japan’s armed forces, known as the Self-Defence Force. They will also participate in several choreographed “friendship” events, including a concert and a reception aboard ship for Chinese naval officers, according to China’s official media.

Liu Jianchao, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that the visit would help to enhance friendship and mutual trust between the two countries.

However, one Japanese newspaper reported that the joint concert had been cancelled because part of the public opinion in China was against the visit of the Japanese destroyer.

The Chinese media also reported that only 500 members of the public would visit the Japanese ship, apparently to avoid further protests over Japan’s wartime atrocities. Japan occupied parts of China from 1931 to 1945, and relations have been overshadowed ever since by what the country regards as Japan’s failure to apologise fully for its war crimes.

A spontaneous internet campaign in China forced both governments to cancel plans for a Japanese military plane to deliver aid to quake victims. Chinese chat rooms, which have helped to stir a number of nationalistic outbursts in recent years, are buzzing again with criticism of the Japanese ship’s visit.

“Before visiting China, Japan should first lower its flag and solemnly apologise for the war against China,” wrote one visitor to a chat room on sina.com. Another said: “When I see the Japanese flag, I can’t describe my feelings. Although I did not live through the anti-Japanese war, it’s pure hatred.”

The Sazanami visit is particularly sensitive because the Japanese Navy defeated China’s at the start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1894 and helped to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. It was responsible for many of the worst atrocities of the Second World War and routinely comes face to face with the Chinese Navy over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

China and Japan agreed to conduct the naval exchange in 2000, during another apparent thaw in relations. They postponed it after Junichiro Koizumi, then the Japanese Prime Minister, visited the Yasakuni Shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead, including several war criminals.

The two sides agreed to resurrect the plan last November and scheduled the Sazanami visit for May but postponed it again by a month because of the earthquake on May 12.

In another positive signal, Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese Prime Minister, agreed last week to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Feng Zhaokui, a Japan specialist at the China Academy of Social Sciences, said that the Sazanami visit would lay the groundwork for higher level military exchanges and co-operation on handling natural disasters. “It will inevitably become an irreversible trend for the two countries’ military to strengthen co-operation in eliminating non-traditional threats and natural calamities,” he wrote in the China Daily.

An editorial in the same paper admitted, however, that the ship’s visit could still cause some controversy. “It will be unrealistic to expect that one visit of a Chinese or Japanese navy destroyer will remove all the doubts between China and Japan,” it said.

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