Japan calls for better China ties

Japan on Monday that managing its deteriorating ties with China had become critical amid warnings of a potential military conflict between the neighbors that could drag in the US.

"Any mismanagement can lead to unintended results," Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Akira Chiba told reporters after speaking at a forum in Washington on troubled Sino-Japanese ties.

He was responding to a warning by a former senior US State Department official at the meeting of increasing prospects of a military conflict between the two Asian giants that would make US involvement inevitable.

"The management of the situation is extremely important," Chiba said, adding that he was however "optimistic of the wisdom" of the Chinese and Japanese governments in preventing the situation from worsening.

Sino-Japanese have soured over Japan's wartime legacy, fueled by visits by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the publication of Japanese textbooks that allegedly whitewash Japanese wartime atrocities.

Frictions also occurred over Beijing's opposition to Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

But Chiba said "the juicy issue" amid the sagging relations between Tokyo and Beijing was the question of a "strategic realignment" in China-Russia ties.

"The question is that the history issue is not taken care of by the art of diplomacy," he said.

"The strategic alignment or realignment can be confrontation or collaboration," he said, referring to the once close ties between Japan and China against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

While Sino-Japanese ties have plummeted to one of their worst levels, China-Russia relations have grown closer recently.

Moscow Beijing have wiped out old border conflicts, signed new trade accords and held large-scale joint military maneuvers.

Some see the Sino-Russian rapprochement as a sign of a desire to wrest military and economic power in the Asia-Pacific region from the US.

"There is an increasing chance of a military miscalculation, mis-communication between the Japan and China militaries that could involve the United States," warned Randall Schriver, a former top East Asian official at the State Department during President George W. Bush's first term of office.

"My understanding is the militaries are coming into contacts [with] the potential for a more dangerous situation," he said.

A Chinese naval destroyer took aim at a Japanese military surveillance aircraft near their disputed waters in September last year, and a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine entered Japanese waters off the Okinawa Islands a year earlier.

On a number of occasions, Chinese research vessels have also intruded into Japanese waters without giving prior notification.

"I am more worried about a conflagration in the East China Sea than in the Taiwan Strait," said Dan Blumenthal, a former senior director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the Pentagon.

He said the Asian region was "very worried" about a potential conflict between Japan and China.

Yang Bojiang, a visiting Chinese academic at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told the forum that Chinese leaders were more interested in resolving rising domestic issues than going to war.