Japan called on the United States to join forces in stopping China from taking market-distorting investment practices in a bilateral finance leaders' meeting, a senior Japanese finance ministry official said on Thursday.

During the meeting with his U.S. counterpart Steven Mnuchin, Finance Minister Taro Aso also repeated Tokyo's request for Washington to give Japanese steel and aluminum goods a permanent exemption from U.S. import tariffs, the official said.

Aso and Mnuchin met on the sidelines of a weekend meeting of Group of Seven finance leaders, held in the Canadian mountain resort.