China says it has no reason to apologise to Japan

ABC | April 17 2005

China's Foreign Minister says Beijing has never done anything for which it has to apologise to the Japanese people.

The comments came as Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and his Japanese counterpart Nobutaka Machimura were meeting in the Chinese capital to discuss tensions between the two countries.

Mr Li rejected Tokyo's demands for an apology for anti-Japanese protests that have been taking place across China.

He said the main problem was that the Japanese government had done a series of things that had hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

These included some international issues such as human rights, and a controversial history textbook which many Chinese say whitewashes Japan's wartime brutality.