Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi said his nation and China will work together to help Europe solve its debt crisis through the International Monetary Fund.

Europe needs a bigger so-called firewall of added funding to contain the crisis, even as Greece shows some improvement in solving its financial woes, Azumi told reporters in Beijing yesterday after meeting Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan. Azumi, who met Chinese Finance Minister Xiu Xuren during his visit, also said he asked China to make its currency more flexible.

"We shared the view that Europe needs to make more efforts to create a bigger firewall," Azumi said. "We also agreed to act together as the IMF will probably ask the U.S., Japan and China" to help boost its lending capacity.

The IMF proposed last month to boost its lending funds by as much as $500 billion to insulate the global economy against any deterioration of Europe's sovereign crisis. That would be similar to a G-20 decision in April 2009 to triple the fund's resources as part of plans to pull the world out of recession. At that time, the U.S. and Japan each contributed $100 billion, the EU $178 billion and China $50 billion.