Japan and China may have decades of political antagonism between each other stemming from atrocities committed during the Japanese occupation of China before and through World War II (and those tensions may bubble over from time to time), but that's not about to get in the way of business.

Howard Stringer, CEO of Japanese electronics giant Sony, said today that the company expects China to be a major source of growth in the years to come, according to an Associated Press report.

At a news conference introducing the company's strategy in China, Stringer addressed concerns about political tensions between the two countries, a hot topic at the moment.

"Sony is a global company with 70 percent of its earnings outside Japan, and so local politics like that is less clear and appropriate for me to comment on," Stringer said, adding, "We look forward to a continuing strong relationship with China in many years to come and growing our businesses."

The root of the most recent flare-up in Sino-Japanese tensions is Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visit to a shrine honoring the country's war dead today. The visit drew immediate protests from China and South Korea, which both noted that 14 convicted war criminals were among the 2 million Japanese who died during the war and are honored by the shrine.

Earlier this year, Chinese protestors, upset with the way new Japanese textbooks addressed the country's wartime atrocities (that is, the killing of 250,000 civilians in Nanjing by Japanese troops, which is referred to as an "incident" rather than a "massacre"), threw rocks at the Japanese consulate in Beijing and called for a boycott of all Japanese goods.

While Sony's China Web page was hit by hackers earlier this year, the company said its products appear just as popular as they were six months ago, according to the AP report.

Sony China president Kei Kodera was quoted as saying that Sony currently reaches only 10 to 20 percent of the population, but that, "At this moment we are quite confident about growth in China in the next four to five years. We expect quite steady growth."