BEIJING - Teams from China and Japan have met in a bid to seek common ground over their blood-soaked history, a sensitive exercise in a region where events generations ago can still dictate today's politics.

Visitors view a Japanese war-time army flag displayed at the Anti-Japanese War Museum in Dayi county in China's southwestern province of Sichuan. Teams from China and Japan have met in a bid to seek common ground over their blood-soaked history, a sensitive exercise in a region where events generations ago can still dictate today's politics. [AFP]

Ten scholars from each side gathered at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing for two days of talks, the first in what were expected to become twice-yearly meetings.

They aimed to eventually publish a joint study, scheduled for 2008.

But observers in both Beijing and Tokyo expressed doubts about their ability to achieve much, given dramatically different interpretations of history.

"Simply put, this is a way to kill time," said Koji Okamoto, a professor emeritus of Asian history at Osaka International University.

Although both teams included specialists in ancient history, the focus was overwhelmingly on the period from 1931 to 1945, when Japan's imperial army waged a war of aggression and conquest on the mainland.

Ties between Asia's two largest economies have been strained for years over what is seen as a lack of Japanese remorse over a conflict that killed or injured an estimated 35 million Chinese, the vast majority of them civilians.

However, reaching genuine consensus on what happened during the war years could be extremely difficult, observers suggested.

Post-war reconciliation between, say, Germany and the former Soviet Union was never hampered by disagreement about basic historical facts, argued Jin Linbo, a researcher with the China Institute of International Studies.

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"It's not like Germany and Russia, who have nearly the same statistics on the casualties," he said.

"During the war, China was backward in statistics, and no accurate figures can be given."

Former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi inflamed tensions with annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine in central Tokyo, which honors 2.5 million war dead including 14 top war criminals.

Koizumi's successor Shinzo Abe has so far worked to improve ties with Japan's giant neighbor via gestures such as making China his first overseas destination as prime minister.

The joint history project is a result of such efforts to ease friction, but the outcomes could be meager, observers warned.

Okamoto, the Japanese historian, noted that a recent joint historical study between Japan and South Korea had largely just agreed to disagree on sensitive issues.

"I don't think there will be any results, like with the Koreans. With the meeting with South Korea, the Korean historians stood by and represented their government's position," he said.

China is particularly upset by some Japanese history textbooks that make little mention of atrocities such as the 1937 Nanjing massacre.

China says 300,000 civilians were killed when Japanese troops embarked on an orgy of destruction in the east Chinese city. Allied trials of Japanese war criminals documented 140,000 victims.

It is rarely mentioned in the Chinese media that the textbooks in question are used by just a small number of Japanese schools.

Okamoto said that discussion about Nanjing would be far too sensitive for the joint study group, considering the passions over the massacre.

"Even if the Japanese figure for Nanjing were correct, the Chinese professors won't agree, as they have taught their students their perspective," he said