BEIJING - Japanese lawmakers arrived in China on Wednesday for their five-day visit as a new gesture aiming to build connections with future Chinese leaders and bolster bilateral ties.

The delegation, headed by Yoshimasa Hayashi, acting chairman of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council, consists of ten lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition camps, according to Japan's Kyodo News Agency (KNA).

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The lawmakers will meet with the Communist Party of China's local heads and exchange views on a series of topics including economics, diplomacy and security. The delegation is scheduled to visit food companies in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

The visit is said to be another gesture to lift the low Sino-Japanese relations following the Japanese Ambassador to China Uichiro Niwa's three-day visit in Nanjing starting on Dec 20.

Zhou Yongsheng, deputy chief of the Japan studies center at the Beijing-based China Foreign Affairs University said he didn't foresee a quick thaw of the ties.

"Japan's current realistic diplomatic policy leads to its hardness when dealing with China on defense affairs, and cooperative posture when handling two-way economic affairs," Zhou said.

The Japanese media reported on Tuesday that a Japanese carmaker has larger ambitions for the growing Chinese market. Honda, one of Japan's largest automakers was aiming to expand its market share in China, where its sales volume is expected to surpass that on Japan's domestic turf in 2011.

Sino-Japanese ties have been consistently low since Japanese authorities illegally detained the captain of a Chinese trawler in waters off China's Diaoyu Islands in September.

"The trawler incident happened in September and a series of moves by Tokyo following that have already hurt Chinese people's feelings and the damage needs time and long effort to cure," Zhou said.

On Dec 17, Japan adopted the National Defense Program Guidelines, saying China's military development and lack of transparency are matters of concern to the East Asian region and international community, urging Beijing to act responsibly.

The scheduled 12th Japan-China security talks on Dec 24 was delayed to the beginning of next month due to "a conflict of schedule", according to a report by the KNA.

"It is not a proper time for the two countries to hold the security talks so soon after Japan published its new defense guidelines - an obvious provocation to China and not a wise move," Zhou said, adding that it reveals the Tokyo's lack of experience in handling diplomacy.