The strained relations between China and its neighbor Japan due mainly to the Yasukuni Shrine row have shown little improvement despite recent diplomatic missions.

Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Toshihiro Nikai, ended his China visit on Thursday. He was here seeking to ease the current situation by maintaining prosperous trade ties.

However, Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai underlined the Yasukuni Shrine issue, which he said was closely linked with trade cooperation.

"The bilateral political relations will certainly affect economic ones, which have already seen a slower growth in 2005," Bo said in a meeting with Nikai.

"The crux of the strained political relations issue is that Japanese leaders' repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine severely hurt the feelings of the Chinese people," Bo said.

The shrine honors over two million Japanese war dead including 14 war criminals who had a major part to play in Japan's military aggression against its Asian neighbors during World War II.

In Beijing, Nikai also met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the highest-level dialogue session between the two sides in the last two years. Nikai also met with Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan.

The Chinese and Japanese ruling parties also conducted their first ever meeting under the China-Japan Ruling Parties Exchange Mechanism in Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday, a meeting aimed at repairing soured ties.

The Mechanism was adopted in 2004 by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Japan's ruling coalition, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komei Party.

The LDP's No. 3 leader Hidenao Nakagawa headed the eight-member delegation. Japanese leaders expressed anxiety over the current situation.

They pledged to continue communicating with the CPC to explore practical and concrete measures to break the deadlock.

"The recent China-Japan exchanges indicate that the Japanese side intends to mend ties and wants to keep the communication channel open so as to prevent relations from further deteriorating," according to Yao Wenli, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"On the one hand, Japan realizes that the Japan-China relations should not proceed in their current state. On the other, some Japanese choose not to give up their incorrect view of history," Liu Jiangyong, a professor with Tsinghua University, said.

Just ahead of Nikai's scheduled meeting later on Wednesday with Premier Wen, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Wednesday rejected the latest call from China to stop visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, according to a Kyodo News report.

"Yasukuni won't be used as a diplomatic card," Koizumi was quoted saying.

Koizumi's shrine visits not only anger China, but is a cause of disagreement among Japanese politicians, some of whom call for a halt to the visits and an improvement to Japan-China relations.

Yoshihisa Inoue, policy chief of the Komei Party, said his party has always opposed the visits because they are an important contributing factor to worsening mutual trust between Japan and China.

"The Chinese side has no room for concessions or compromise on the historical issue," according to Wang Yingfan, vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee under China's legislature, the National People's Congress.

(Xinhua News Agency February 24, 2006)