Japan suffers "a credibility issue" if it seeks to improve ties with China while attacking and tarnishing China's image, Beijing said on Tuesday.

The Japanese embassy in London was paying the think tank Henry Jackson Society (HJS) a reported 10,000 pounds a month to run an anti-China propaganda campaign and label China as a threat, the London-based Sunday Times newspaper reported recently.

Beijing has noted the report and has not seen Tokyo making any clarifications, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular media conference in Beijing on Tuesday.

"If what the report says is true, I would like to say this (the Japanese attempt) will be of no avail," Lu said.

Beijing urges Tokyo to correct its view on China and do more to facilitate the improvement of the two-way ties, not the opposite, Lu added.

According to the report by the Sunday Times, Admiral Lord West, former first sea lord and chief of Royal Navy staff, was asked by HJS to put his name to an article published on a political website last July which attacked China's maritime claims over the South China Sea.

Commenting on the British individuals involved in the reported campaign, Lu said Beijing "has no interests in an in-depth probe" of the motives behind their serving as a mouthpiece for Tokyo.

As ties between China and Britain are in good shape currently, their behavior "does not represent the mainstream of the China-UK relationship and runs against the expectations of the public in both countries", Lu added.