China's volatile relations with Japan are harming prospects for regional co-operation ahead of a new Asian summit attended by the two country's prime ministers, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Wednesday.
"Frankly, the difficulties in Chinese-Japanese relations are unfavourable to advancing Asian regional co-operation," Cui Tiankai, the director-general of the Chinese foreign ministry's Asian affairs department, told reporters.
"These difficulties are also making neighbouring countries anxious, and they have good reason to be so," he said.
Cui made the comments ahead of a tour by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao from December 4 that will take in France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Malaysia, where Wen will attend the inaugural meeting of the East Asia Summit on December 14.
China's objections to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine - which China and other Asian countries consider a memorial to Japanese war criminals from World War Two - made a meeting between Wen and Koizumi nigh impossible during or before the summit, Cui said.
"To hope that everything would be normal as if nothing happened would be impossible," Cui said.
The East Asian Summit grew out of annual meetings between the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) and China, Japan and South Korea. India, Australia and New Zealand will also attend the summit in Kuala Lumpur.
Analysts said the meeting was China's latest diplomatic stage for reassuring neighbouring countries and blunting US influence in the region.
"China believes that its active participation in these multilateral activities institutions defuses understandable concerns in the region about China's growing economic and military power," said Avery Goldstein, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
But tensions between China and Japan over Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine, Japanese history textbooks and Japanese anxiety about China's rising regional influence, may overshadow the summit.
China has not yet decided whether to agree to meetings of the two countries' foreign ministers or to hold trilateral ministerial meetings that include South Korea - both customary parts of past Asean-East Asian meetings since 1999 - Cui said. While the shrine visits are the main public dispute between China and Japan, the two countries are also sizing up their relative influence in the region as China's grows, said Huang Dahui, an expert on East Asian relations at People's University in Beijing.
China did not welcome opening the summit to countries outside of East and Southeast Asia, whereas Japan, eager to balance Chinese influence and give allies of Washington a stronger voice, supported their inclusion, Huang said.
"If China and Japan can't be like France and Germany and cooperate, then real Asian co-operation will be very difficult. Their bilateral relationship is crucial to the region," he said.
Cui said China and Asean welcomed other countries to join the summit, as long as they agreed to sign Asean's Treaty of Amity and Co-operation. "It's an open process," he said, adding that Russia may join next year.
The United States has said it would like to attend the summit as an observer, but has objected to signing the Asean's treaty, said Goldstein.
Wen's tour in Europe will focus on trade ties, said Zhao Jun, the Chinese foreign ministry's European affairs chief.
Wen will sign a series of trade agreements and business deals with the four countries, and will visit the Airbus production base in Toulouse, France, Zhao told reporters.
He declined to confirm whether Wen would sign agreements with Airbus for new plane orders.