The government's top spokesman on Sunday said the Foreign Ministry has lodged a protest with China over President Xi Jinping's remarks on the number of Chinese killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanjing Massacre in 1937.

At a think tank forum in Berlin on Friday, Xi said Japanese troops killed more than 300,000 residents when it captured what was then its capital during the Second Sino-Japanese war.

Xi also said more than 35 million Chinese were eventually killed or injured as Japan waged a war of aggression stemming from its militarism.