Vice-President Xi Jinping will kick off a nine-day tour of four Asian countries on Monday with his first stop in Japan, the Foreign Ministry announced yesterday.

Xi will be the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Japan since Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took over the country's leadership in September.

Analysts said Japan, under the leadership of the DPJ, is growing increasingly closer to the rest of Asia by having more high-level interactions with China.