"We are shocked by, and express our strong indignation over, the Japanese foreign minister's remark of overtly glorifying invasion history," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.

Japan's occupation "made Taiwan people suffer enslavement and brought grave disaster to the Chinese nation. It is fact that everyone in the world knows," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Kong as saying.

"The half-a-century colonization of the island was an evil aspect of the Japanese militaristic invasion against China," he added.

Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years from 1895 until the end of World War II.

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after a civil war but Beijing still claims the island and threatens to invade if it formally declares independence.

Aso said he believed Japan "did a good thing" to Taiwan during its occupation, such as implementing a compulsory education system, Japan's Kyodo News agency said.

"Thanks to the significant improvement in educational standards and literacy (during colonization), Taiwan is now a country with a very high education level and keeps up with the current era," Aso told an audience in the western Japanese city of Fukuoka.

"This is something I was told by an important figure in Taiwan and all the elderly people knew about it," Aso said.

Last week Aso triggered outrage from China and South Korea by saying that Japan's Emperor Akihito should visit the Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japan's war dead. The dead include 14 World War II war criminals.

China and South Korea, which were colonized by Japan before and during World War II, see the shrine as the symbol of Tokyo's militaristic past.

Japan's diplomatic relations with China are at a low ebb, primarily as a result of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the shrine.

Late wartime emperor Hirohito stopped visiting the Yasukuni shrine after it enshrined top war criminals in 1978. Since becoming emperor in 1989, Akihito has refrained from going to the Shinto sanctuary.

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