Strategic and mutually beneficial relations between Japan and China should not be harmed by any changes in Japan's political situation, a senior official of the Chinese Communist Party said Wednesday at a forum in Tokyo.

Liu Hongcai, deputy chief of the International Liaison Department of the CPC's Central Committee, made the remarks in a speech on the final day of the two-day gathering.

"Whoever becomes the next prime minister of Japan, the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between the two countries must persist," said Liu, who met with several leading Japanese politicians, both in the ruling and opposition camps, during the forum.

More than 100 political, business and academic leaders from both countries attended the annual gathering, organized by China Daily, a leading English-language newspaper, and the Japanese nonprofit organization Genron-NPO.

In winding up the forum, Zhao Qizheng, head of the 60-member Chinese delegation to the forum, said Japan and China are in dire need of nongovernmental communication channels for informal and candid exchanges of information and views, which would supplement official channels.

Many Chinese participants welcomed the normalization of official dialogue between the two governments following the mutual exchanges of top leaders' official visits in the past two years.

Zhao, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said it is difficult for the Chinese public to erase negative images of Japan stemming from the Nanjing Massacre and wartime militarism "in one year or two."

"But they are associating such images with Japan only as historical facts, and they are not emotionally charged. The Japanese should not be too worried about it," he said.