SINO-JAPANESE RELATIONS.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Photo albums presented to Mr Yajima Akira by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. A nicely presented photograph collection celebrating a Japanese businessman's participation in the Japan Products Expo held in Beijing and Shanghai in late 1956. The event was China's first major trade event with a country from the "capitalist" world, and these albums testify to the outwardly facing diplomatic and economic agenda of Mao and other Chinese communist leaders in the mid-1950s.In the wake of the April 1952 Moscow Economic Conference, the Chinese government established the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. While the organization initially focused on building relationships with the fraternal communist world, it was understandably also keen to forge ties with Japan and the major Western economies. The Japanese Products Expo opened to much fanfare in Beijing in October 1956 (before moving to Shanghai) and featured over 50,000 different products, with Mao himself visiting and particularly intrigued by the latest transistor radios. The first album opens with photographs of the Beijing venue (the distinctive Soviet Exhibition Centre) and the layout of the expo, including over 150 stands, inside the decorated main hall. Other photos show curious Chinese visitors admiring different displays. The recipient of these albums, Yajima Akira, may well have been in textile manufacturing as pictures from the exhibition pay particular attention to looms and

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