China said on Tuesday it had lodged a formal protest with Japan over new Japanese school textbooks that China says distort the history of Japanese atrocities in China and reassert a Japanese claim to a group of disputed islands.
China, the world's second-largest economy, and Japan, the third-largest, have a difficult history, their relations strained by the legacy of Japan's aggression before and during World War II and conflicting claims over a group of islets in the East China Sea.
Japanese media say some of the textbooks approved for use from April 2017 describe the disputed islands as being an inherent part of Japan.
The books also revise some references to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
When asked about the textbooks at a news -briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said China was extremely concerned and had lodged "stern representations" with Japan.
"No matter what steps Japan may take to promote and market its mistaken position, it cannot change the basic reality that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China," she said.
"The Nanjing Massacre was an atrocity carried out by the Japanese militarists when they invaded China. The evidence is cast iron, and a conclusion was reached about it long ago," Hua said.
"This whitewashing and censoring by Japan in these textbooks again shows that Japan is unwilling to face up to its historical mistakes.
"We urge Japan to reflect on its militarist aggression, educate its younger generation correctly, and improve ties with its neighbors through practical action," Hua noted.
China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in Nanjing, China's capital at the time.
The verdict of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal on March 10, 1947 estimated the death toll at "more than 300,000," but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars categorically deny that a massacre took place.
