Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told European Council President Herman Van Rompuy in a phone conversation Monday that he hopes the European Union will maintain its ban on the export of weapons to China, according to Kyodo News Agency.

Abe said it is necessary to continue the arms export ban amid increasingly tense situation in East Asia. Van Rompuy assured the Japanese PM that EU's policy regarding China will not change, and that there were no "discussions" on the matter.

It's reported that Abe made the same proposal before. In January, Katsuyuki Kawai, a member of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, delivered to NATO secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen Abe's personal letter, in which Abe called on NATO to join hands with Tokyo in face of growingly assertive China.

In the letter, Abe also expressed his concerns about EU having discussions on lifting the arms ban.

The Japanese administration has been promoting its "China Threat" theory and trying to contain China through giving aid to neighboring countries ever since the territorial row over a chain of islands in the East China Sea broke out.