BEIJING — Relations between Asia’s two biggest powers, Japan and China, have been strained for months, with near-constant sniping over a territorial dispute and the two countries’ fraught history.

Now, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan has escalated the war of words, telling an audience on Wednesday at the Davos conference in Switzerland that the increasing tensions between China and Japan were similar to the competition between Germany and Britain before World War I, a blunt assessment that concurs with recent remarks by prominent historians.

Mr. Abe, a star speaker at the gathering, said a “similar situation” existed in both periods because while each set of countries enjoyed strong trade relations, that was not sufficient to overcome the strategic rivalry.

His remarks were in answer to a question at a forum moderated by a columnist for The Financial Times, Gideon Rachman, who has written on the subject.