The Chinese government again requests the Japanese government to correct its wrongdoing of permitting Lee Teng-Hui's tour to Japan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Japan reportedly issued tourist visas to Lee Teng-hui, allowing him and his family to visit Nagoya and Kyoto for "sightseeing." The Japanese government said Lee would not conduct any political activity during his stay in Japan.

When asked to comment on this issue at a press conference, spokesman Liu Jianchao said the Japanese government, disregarding the solemn representation and firm opposition from the Chinese government, stubbornly allowed Lee to go to Japan to carry out separatist activities.

"The Chinese government expresses strong dissatisfaction and again demands the Japanese side rectify this wrong."

The political aim of Lee's tour is obviously to find people to back his bid for "Taiwan independence" and create external conditions for his separatism, said Liu, noting Japan clearly knows the point.

At a press conference held last Thursday, Liu described Lee as the chief representative of radicals seeking "Taiwan independence."

"The Japanese government's disregarding Sino-Japanese relations and permitting Lee's visit to Japan are connivance and support for 'Taiwan independence' separatist activity, as well as provocation to China's peaceful reunification cause," he said at that conference.

Lee, leader of the Taiwan authority from 1988 to 2000, always tried to raise Taiwan's "international profile" during his 12 years as the leader of the island, and went further and further on the way toward "Taiwan independence."

In 1995, he visited the United States on the pretext of an academic tour, which led to a serious retrogression in Sino-US relations and agitated the tense situation across the Straits.

In 1999, before he stepped down, he redefined the island's ties with the mainland as special "state-to-state" relations.

By People's Daily Online