China Tuesday expressed astonishment and dissatisfaction over Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura's recent remarks asking China to improve education on history, saying that the remarks were "totally unreasonable".

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said this when he answered a journalist's question at the regular press conference Tuesday. The journalist said on March 4, Machimura said during a session of the Japanese House of Councilors Budget Committee that Japan would ask China to improve its history education, which he defined as anti-Japanese education. He also said that when he has a chance to meet the Chinese foreign minister, he would like to specifically raise this point.

In response, Liu said "we are astonished and dissatisfied to hear the remarks".

Japanese militarists waged a war invading China in the 1930s, bringing not only tremendous sufferings to the Chinese people but also lots of pains to the Japanese people, Liu said.

The Chinese government always advocates "taking history as a mirror and looking forward to the future" and educates its people in the spirit of keeping friendship between the Chinese people and Japanese people generation after generation, he said.

"It is totally unreasonable for the Japanese side to criticize China's history education," he said.

"On the contrary, the Japanese side should correctly face and handle the historical issue, thus making positive efforts to enhance friendship between the two peoples, improve and develop bilateral ties," he added.