* Japan hopes for frank exchange with China's Hu at APEC
* Beijing says no plans now for bilateral meeting
* APEC seeks free trade region, balanced growth
By Linda Sieg and Chris Buckley
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Third time lucky, or three strikes and you're out?
On Monday, Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said he hoped Prime Minister Naoto Kan could meet Chinese President Hu Jintao for talks at an Asia-Pacific summit, where leaders are to lay out a path to free trade in the fast-growing region.
It will be the third time in recent weeks that Kan has sought a bilateral meeting with a Chinese leader. On the previous two occasions, he had to settle for brief informal chats, a sign of how deeply a territorial row has bruised ties between Asia's two biggest economies.
Leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will gather on Nov. 13-14 in Yokohama, south of Tokyo to discuss how to free up trade and achieve balanced growth in a region accounting for more than half of global economic output.
"I hope that the leaders (of Japan and China) will have a frank exchange of views from a broad perspective, despite small differences, so as to nurture strategic, mutually beneficial relations," Maehara told parliament in Tokyo.
But China is still playing hard-to-get.
In Beijing, Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told a news conference: "There are no plans for a bilateral visit (when Hu is in Japan). As to whether there is a chance of a bilateral meeting (during APEC), I do not have the agenda yet."
Sino-Japanese ties have chilled since September when Japan detained a Chinese trawler captain whose boat collided with Japanese coast guard ships near a chain of disputed islands that are close to vast potential oil and gas reserves.
The diplomatic strains risk spilling over into business ties between Asia's dominant economies, which together account for about 17 percent of the world's economic output. China is edging past Japan as Asia's biggest economy, and is Japan's biggest trading partner with bilateral trade worth $270 billion in 2009.
Both sides appear to be working towards a meeting this time that would help ease the strains weighing on trade and political ties, said Liu Jiangyong, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who specialises in ties with Japan.
MUTUAL MISTRUST
The sea dispute returned to the headlines on Friday after a video, appearing to show the Chinese trawler colliding with the Japanese vessels, was leaked to the Internet.
Kan met Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for a brief, informal chat at an Asian summit in Hanoi in late October aiming to defuse the territorial tensions, after expectations of a formal meeting were dashed with China blaming Japan for "damaging the atmosphere".
That meeting followed another short conversation in Brussels on the sidelines of a Asia-Europe summit in Brussels.
China has blamed Japan for scuppering the talks, although analysts in Tokyo say Beijing is worried that any appearance of coddling Japan would inflame its own citizens.
"If they have absorbed the lessons of the recent multi-lateral meetings, then Japan won't use this one as a venue to air bilateral disputes with China," said Liu, the professor.
"If they do, then again they will have to deal with an unhappy guest."
Sino-Japanese ties have long been plagued by China's bitter memories of Tokyo's wartime aggression and by regional rivalry.
Public opinion in both countries reflects deep mutual mistrust, limiting the ability of policy-makers to compromise.
A recent survey by Japan's Yomiuri newspaper and China's Xinhua news agency found 87 percent of Japanese said China could not be trusted. In China, 79 percent said the same of Japan.
Voter dissatisfaction with Kan's handling of the dispute -- he took office in June as Japan's fifth premier in three years -- has also helped to erode support for his government.
Only 34 percent of voters backed his government, down from 53 percent in early October. A whopping 91 percent said they felt anxiety about Kan's security and foreign policies, and 82 percent took a negative view of his handling of the territorial feud.
Kan, already struggling with a divided parliament and weak economy, has come under heavy fire at home for seeming to cave into Beijing's demands to free the Chinese skipper whose fishing boat collided with two Japanese patrol boats, especially after a video of the incident was leaked to the Internet on Friday. (Additional reporting by Simon Rabinovitch in Beijing; editing by Bill Tarrant)