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Japan to talk about end of China loans - media
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-05 00:53
Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said on Thursday Japan would end
development loans to China but would hold talks with Beijing to ensure the
cessation of the aid was not disruptive, Kyodo news agency said.
Japan has already reduced low interest loans to booming China for three
straight years, adding tension to a relationship long soured by Japan's brutal
occupation of parts of China from 1931 to 1945.
"We will hold talks with the Chinese side toward a soft landing for an end to
yen loans while considering it in the overall policy toward China," Kyodo news
agency quoted Machimura as saying.
Machimura did not give a date for the end of loans to China.
He was speaking during a meeting on overseas aid attended by various cabinet
ministers, Kyodo said. He said in December Japan may review its plans for
economic aid to China this year.
The issue is highly sensitive as some analysts say China sees Japan's
development aid as a form of war reparations even though Japan says all wartime
compensation issues concerning China were settled by a 1972 joint statement that
established ties. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said last week Japan
may stop fresh development loans to China by 2008 when Beijing hosts the
Olympics. Government officials later said no decision had been made to stop
fresh yen loans.
Some Japanese politicians argue that China's rapid economic and military
expansion disqualify it from receiving aid from Japan, which is struggling with
huge budget deficits.
Japan scaled back loans to China by 20 percent in 2003/04 to about $940
million, leaving India as the top recipient of Japanese foreign aid loans.
Despite a flourishing economic relationship, ties between Tokyo and Beijing
have been chilled by a range of disputes, including Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's annual trips to Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japan's war dead.
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