BEIJING (AP) -- China and South Korea said they expect warming trends in their sometimes rocky relations with Japan to continue following Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's announcement Wednesday that he would resign.

China ties with Japan achieved new stability during Abe's year in office, after nose-diving under his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Koizumi inflamed tensions with both Beijing and Seoul by repeatedly visiting a Tokyo shrine to dead Japanese soldiers, including executed war criminals, but Abe pointedly did not make such pilgrimages.

"Over the past year, China-Japan relations have made clear improvement and development through the efforts of the governments and people in all spheres in the two nations," China's Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement posted on its Web site.

"We believe the further development of the relations between the two countries complies with the basic interests of the two nations and their people and this momentum will continue," it said.

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong sounded similarly upbeat.

"If a new prime minister is appointed and a new Cabinet is formed, we hope that the existing friendly and cooperative relations between South Korea and Japan would be further developed," Cho said.

Both China and South Korea suffered under brutal Japanese occupations in the first half of the last century and remain extremely sensitive to perceived attempts by Japanese politicians to play down Japan's wartime guilt.

Chinese scholars said they don't expect any vast changes in relations following Abe's announcement, but said that depended largely on the attitude and policies of his successor.

Abe's resignation "introduces new unstable factors into bilateral relations," said Jin Linbo, a researcher at the China Institute for International Studies.

China-Japan relations hit rock-bottom in 2005 when violent protests were staged in several cities by Chinese angered by a series of issues, including Japanese textbook revisions they said watered down the Imperial Army's World War II aggression against China.

A five-year impasse in ties ended when Abe made China his first foreign nation to visit as prime minister, arriving just weeks after taking office in September 2006. Ties with South Korea similarly suffered during Koizumi's term in office.

Although Abe did not visit Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine during his term, the sides remain divided over history, territorial claims, and Japanese participation in the U.N. Security Council.

"Relations are stable at the moment, but problems of the past have yet to be resolved," Jin said.

Abe's former foreign minister Taro Aso, seen as a nationalist like Abe, is considered a front-runner to replace him. Abe's resignation announcement followed a string of damaging scandals and a humiliating electoral defeat.

China doesn't consider any Abe successor likely to take a more nationalist line than him, further limiting the impact of his departure, said Zhu Feng an expert at Peking University's International Security Program.

"Unless there are major provocative actions on the Japanese side, such as shrine visits, there are unlikely to be changes in relations of a major magnitude," Zhu said.