CHINESE President Hu Jintao said in Tokyo yesterday that the fourth political document represented new progress as well as a fresh consensus that the two countries had reached.

China and Japan signed a joint statement on advancing strategic and mutually beneficial relations after Hu and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda held talks earlier yesterday.

Based on the previous three political documents, the joint statement formulated the guiding principles for the long-term development of bilateral ties and mapped out the future for China-Japan relations, Hu said at a joint press briefing with Fukuda.

Hu believes that under the guidance of the new political document and the previous three, China and Japan will surely be able to open up a brighter future for their relations.

The previous three political documents serve as the bedrock for developing friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.

In 1972, China and Japan issued the Sino-Japanese Joint Statement and normalized diplomatic relations. The year 2008 marks the 30th anniversary of the endorsement of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship. The Sino-Japanese Joint Declaration was signed during former Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s visit to Japan in 1998.

Hu arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday for a five-day “warm spring” official visit, the first trip by a Chinese president to Japan in a decade.

In an earlier announcement yesterday, Hu said China would offer a pair of giant pandas to Japan on loan.

Fukuda had expressed the hope that China would lease pandas to Japan for joint research. His comments came a day after the April 30 death of Ling Ling, a giant panda sent to Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo in 1992, in exchange for a Japanese-born panda cub.(Xinhua)