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FACTBOX-Japan's PM Fukuda and China's Hu Jintao
07 May 2008 03:38:45 GMT
 Source: Reuters
May 7 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao met for a high-profile summit on Wednesday, as the two countries seek to build mutual trust despite regional rivalry and simmering feuds.

Following are some facts about Fukuda and Hu.

YASUO FUKUDA

* The bespectacled Fukuda, 71, took office in September 2007 after his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, quit abruptly. The son of former prime minister Takeo Fukuda, he is viewed as a moderate conservative and favours warmer ties with Asian neighbours. He has said he will stay away from Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

* After graduating from Tokyo's Waseda University with an economics degree, Fukuda worked at a Japanese oil company for 17 years. Known as the "shadow foreign minister" when he served as chief cabinet secretary under then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, he quit abruptly in 2004, apparently due to differences with Koizumi over diplomacy towards North Korea.

* Fukuda's public support rates have nosedived to below 20 percent in some polls due to doubts about his leadership in the face of a divided parliament where the opposition controls the upper house, sparking talk that his ruling party will replace him before a general election that must be held by September 2009.

HU JINTAO * Hu, 65, is a hydropower engineer by training and won his political stripes in remote, dirt-poor Gansu and Guizhou provinces and then in Tibet, where he oversaw a crackdown on pro-independence protests in 1988-1989. In 1992 he became the front-runner to succeed Jiang Zemin as national leader when he was promoted to the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party's inner-circle of power.

* Hu succeeded Jiang as Communist Party general secretary in November 2002, then assumed the state presidency in 2003. As China's top leader, Hu has championed "harmonious" policies seeking to bring more wealth to poor farmers and workers while continuing market reforms and one-party control.

* In the 1980s, Hu was a senior official in the Communist Youth League and was heavily involved in bringing 3,000 young Japanese to China in 1984 in a goodwill push. He visited Japan as a Youth League leader in 1985 and as state vice president in 1998. But in 2005 his government allowed rare mass protests denouncing Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine.

* The son of a tea merchant from eastern China, Hu married a fellow Tsinghua University graduate, Liu Yongqing, and is known to enjoy dancing and table tennis. (Sources: Reuters, Xinhua news agency)


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