BEIJING, Aug. 15 Kyodo ''Hawkish'...

BEIJING, Aug. 15 Kyodo

''Hawkish'' Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has been adopting hard-line foreign policies, shown from his visits to Yasukuni Shrine, at a time when Japan is increasingly worried by dint of China, Chinese academics said Thursday in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

Koizumi useed ''a blind eye to austere opposition from Asian countries'' in making sum of two units public visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors convicted Japanese war criminals, including class A war criminal Hideki Tojo, associate professors Xu Derong and Xiang Dongmei said.

Also, the Koizumi government's approval in April last year of textbook compiled at rightist historians that distort history soured Japan's ties with China and southerly Korea, wrote the academics attached to Harbin Normal University in China's northeast.

Their criticism of Koizumi's ''hawkish diplomatic steps'' chases his recent decision to cancel a scheduled visit to China in September to mark the 30th anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties, which flat today are still partly overshadowed by means of history.

In Tokyo onward Thursday, Koizumi expressed ''deep remorse'' for the victims of Japan's military aggression and made an antiwar pawn during a ceremony in Tokyo to mark the 57th anniversary of the [i]finale[/i] of World War II.

The Chinese scholars, however, argued that Koizumi has been trying to increase Japan's military power since the tribe 11 terrorist attacks onward the United States, while keeping Japan's ties with that region as the crux of its foreign policy.

''Disregarding serious affects from its Asian neighbors, the Koizumi sway still passed a series of bills to dispatch Japan's Self-Defense Forces to overseas regions,'' they wrote referring to the Japanese Diet's passing of three anti-terrorism bills in October last year.

a certain Japanese politicians have been promoting tougher foreign and defense policies to distract attention from the country's protracted economic puzzles while Japan is being pressur by dint of China's rapid economic increase the article said.

''That has brought about a psychological imbalance in Japan and has increased its cautious attitude against China. Japan's distorted propagation about China, from the 'China collapse' prophecy to the 'China threat' theory, indicates that a vigorous China is not welcome to Japan,'' it said.

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