TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The vice speaker of Japan's House of Representatives plans to visit Beijing later this month for talks with Chinese top legislators, sources close to the matter said Wednesday.

The visit to Beijing by lower house vice chief Banri Kaieda will come as the neighbors continue to be at loggerheads over the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant and China's detention of a Japanese citizen.

Kaieda is expected to meet with Zhao Leji, ranked No. 3 in the ruling Chinese Communist Party. This would mark the resumption of regular talks between Japan's lower house and the National People's Congress that were suspended in January 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

During his planned visit from July 22, Kaieda is likely to discuss the discharge of the treated water, which China has dubbed "nuclear-contaminated," as well as the release of the Japanese citizen who has been detained for alleged espionage.

Kaieda, one of whose hobbies is Chinese poetry, is a veteran lawmaker of the main left-leaning opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. Zhao is the chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.

Japan-China relations have been frayed by the water discharge from the Fukushima plant into the sea, which began in August 2023, preventing the promotion of high-level communication involving politicians and the facilitation of human exchanges.

The delegation, accompanied by Kaieda, is set to include lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the Japanese Communist Party, the sources said.