Senior Chinese officials snub IMF meeting Beijing's finance chiefs have pulled out of annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Tokyo, amid wrangling between China and Japan over a group of islands in the East China Sea. Xie Xuren, China's finance minister, and Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, will send deputies to the meetings, which run in the Japanese capital until Sunday. Fund officials had last week expected Mr Zhou to attend despite the territorial dispute. But a spokesperson from the fund said on Wednesday that they were warned two days ago that the central bank chief may have to pull out of delivering the prestigious Per Jacobsson lecture that will close the meetings because of scheduling problems. "It has now been confirmed that his deputy Yi Gang will represent him at the IMF-World Bank annual meetings," said the spokesperson. Tensions over a small outcrop of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea boiled over into violent street protests across China in September after Japan's government bought the islands from their private Japanese owner. The islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are claimed by China, Taiwan and Japan, which has administered them for the past four decades and insists there is no dispute over their ownership. Xinhua, China's state news agency, reported on Tuesday that Zhu Guangyao, vice-finance minister, would travel to Tokyo but gave no further detail on the reason for the absence of Mr Xie or Mr Zhou. "If he [Mr Zhou] is not going to attend, it is truly unfortunate as the annual meeting in Tokyo is a very important event," said Osamu Fujimura, Japan's chief cabinet secretary. In any case, economic exchanges between Japan and China are very important, so we hope to smooth bilateral communications broadly. None of China's four biggest state-owned banks - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China - has sent representatives to the Tokyo meetings. In the past, it has been customary for a delegation of top-level Chinese commercial bankers to attend the meetings alongside government officials. A spokesman for ICBC said it was up to each individual financial institution to decide for themselves whether to attend. The Beijing Youth Daily, a state-run paper, on Wednesday quoted an unnamed representative of one of the big four banks as saying that "given the Diaoyu Islands situation now, there is no way that we can attend this meeting." Beijing has shown a willingness in the past to use economic leverage in political disputes with its neighbours and others. In 2010, after the Japanese coast guard arrested the captain of a Chinese trawler in the waters around the islands, China restricted exports to Japan of rare earth minerals used to produce a range of electronic and high-tech products. On Wednesday, Chinese state media said damage to Sino-Japanese ties has already been extensive with a drop in bilateral trade and the cancellation of numerous academic conferences, cultural exchanges and flights between the two countries. With China just weeks away from a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, the country's most senior officials are jockeying for position and influence in an effort to improve their chances of promotion. Additional reporting Simon Rabinovitch in Beijing