Vice-President Li Yuanchao called for Tokyo to offer "sincerity and action" to improve relations with Beijing, while emphasizing China's commitment to improving Sino-Japanese relations.

Li made the remarks in Beijing on Tuesday during a meeting with a delegation of visiting Japanese governors.

Prominent figures from Japan have visited China recently in a bid to thaw the chill in relations, as the two neighbors have seen their ties sink to a new low in the past two years over territorial and historical issues.

Tokyo has appealed for a meeting of top leaders during the upcoming APEC meeting in Beijing in November.

But inflammatory remarks by senior Japanese Cabinet officials continue to cloud the cooperative and friendly agenda. Their comments have been widely interpreted as an attempt to whitewash Japan's wartime atrocities and diminish the country's previous official expressions of remorse.

Leading the visiting delegation was Keiji Yamada, governor of Japan's Kyoto prefecture and president of Japan's National Governors Association.

The group attended the second Sino-Japan Governor Forum, which was held in Beijing on Tuesday. The first forum was in Japan two and a half years ago.

During Tuesday's meeting with the Japanese governors, Li said the development of a long-term and stable Sino-Japanese relationship "serves the fundamental interests of the people of the two countries".

China is willing to push ties forward on the basis of the four key bilateral political documents and in the spirit of drawing lessons from history and facing up to the future, Li said.

Yamada agreed that bilateral relations are important, and that local Japanese governments are willing to enhance friendly exchanges with China to increase mutual understanding and trust between the two peoples.

Local Japanese authorities are ready to "deepen mutually beneficial cooperation to push for improvements in bilateral ties", Yamada said.

Feng Wei, a professor of Japan studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that a major turnaround and improvement of the Sino-Japanese relationship depends mostly on "mutual trust between the two peoples".

Zhao Yinan and Xinhua contributed to this story.

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