by Xinhua writers Sun Xia, Lin Liping, Li Shijia
BEIJING, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan on Monday
jointly released a press communique on their first high-level economic dialogue
which was held over the weekend, confirming a new mechanism for forging
long-term reciprocal cooperation.
The press communique said that at the one-day
dialogue meeting China and Japan had "frank" discussions of issues concerning
macro-economic policies, trade and investment, climate change, environmental
protection and multilateral and regional economic cooperation and the two sides
agreed to release a report on their joint research about bilateral economic and
trade cooperation in the long term.
Gao Hong, research fellow with the Japan Research
Institute of China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said such bilateral
all-round discussions, which enabled the two Asian powers to exchange views on
policies and more importantly to fine-tune their economic, trade and energy
ties, has demonstrated their intent to cement political relationship by further
developing and enhancing economic and trade cooperation.
Further development of economic and trade cooperation
could increase the stability of the bilateral political relationship, Gao noted.
Japan is now China's third largest trade partner and
the second largest source of foreign direct investment. China is Japan's largest
trade partner and one of Japan's fastest growing export markets.
Zhang Jifeng, head of the Economic Office of the
Japan Research Institute of CASS, said China's rapid economic development has
brought opportunities and created huge market for Japan, and economic and trade
cooperation between the two sides is good for both in the long term.
Zhang commented that the press communique was
forward-looking, strategic, pragmatic and detailed beyond its confirmation that
China and Japan saw their relationship as "reciprocal", which was already a very
high-key appreciation of the past and present China-Japan overall relations.
The bilateral cooperation on energy conservation and
environmental protection is particularly a "shining point" in the communique
since 6 out of 20 items of the press communique are related to future bilateral
efforts to deal with related issues, Zhang said.
"Japan and China care much about climate change,
environmental protection and energy saving, Japan has outstanding technologies
while China has huge demand for relevant technologies. The two have common
interests and enjoy strong synchronicity here," said Zhang, adding the two
countries will have bright prospects on cooperation in this area.
The pragmatic and detailed measures in the communique
also include those on facilitating China-Japan trade on agricultural products,
high technologies, logistics and cooperation between Chinese and Japanese small
and medium sized enterprises and pushing forward cooperation on intellectual
property rights protection and in financial areas, said Zhang.
Zhang said despite positive progress, there are still
harsh problems between China and Japan, including the slowdown of bilateral
trade volume growth, decline of Japanese investment in China, barriers to
technical cooperation, Japanese failure to recognise China's full market
economy, China's huge deficit in its trade with Japan and the two countries'
differences on the issue of the East China Sea.
"Harsh problems remain and could not be solved
through one or two mechanisms or exchanges of visits, but the creation of a good
and sound atmosphere is critical to furthering bilateral ties," Zhang added.
The dialogue meeting was co-chaired by Chinese Vice
Premier Zeng Peiyan and Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura whose visit
was considered the prelude of Japan's new Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's upcoming
visit to China.
The dialogue mechanism was jointly launched by
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during
Wen's trip to Japan in April of 2007.
China and Japan agreed to convene the second dialogue
by the end of 2008 in Tokyo, the communique said.
