China hopes Japan to seriously consider the just demands of former Chinese laborers who were forced to work in Japan during World War II, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu in Beijing Thursday.

Jiang told a regular news conference that the impressment of laborers was a severe crime committed by the forces of Japanese militarism during their invasion of China. It is also an issue left over from history between the two countries.

China has been demanding the Japanese government to seriously consider the issue and properly handle it.

The Japanese Supreme Court in late April rejected a damage lawsuit filed by former Chinese laborers, saying Chinese individuals had no right to demand war reparations from Japan.

The five plaintiffs demanded the Tokyo-based construction contractor Nishimatsu Construction Co. to apologize and issue compensations.

The lawsuit was filed in 1998 by Shao Yicheng, Song Yicheng and three families of the deceased laborers, who were among some 360 Chinese forced by Nishimatsu Construction to toil under bitter conditions at a work camp in Hiroshima prefecture in southern Japan during World War II.

Source: Xinhua