While the spotlight shines on relations between China and Japan, Japan's Supreme Court is expected to overturn a Hiroshima High Court ruling that ordered a construction company to pay 27.5 million yen (US$229,000) in compensation to Chinese wartime laborers, sources said.

The top court's expected move could deal a critical blow to other compensation lawsuits involving Chinese plaintiffs and Japan's actions during World War II, including damages claims by Chinese women forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers.

The decision could even develop into a diplomatic issue, one lawyer warned.

The Supreme Court's Second Petty Bench has already notified the parties involved in the lawsuit to be present at the hearing on March 16, the sources said.

Such hearings are normally held only when the top court intends to overturn a conclusion reached by a lower court.

The Supreme Court's decision will be its first on whether the joint communique, in which the Chinese government renounced any claim for reparations from World War II, also covers individual claims to compensation.

Five Chinese plaintiffs, including former forced laborers and relatives of deceased workers, in January 1998 sued Nishimatsu Construction at the Hiroshima District Court, seeking a total of 27.5 million yen for their arduous construction work at a hydro power plant in Hiroshima Prefecture.

The plaintiffs claimed the workers were taken to Japan in or around 1944 and were forced to dig tunnels and labor in other work for at least 12 hours a day.

But the court rejected the lawsuit, saying the right to seek compensation had ended when the statute of limitations in the case expired.

source: China Daily/Asahi Shimbun