Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Wednesday said China and Japan would co-launch a high-level economic dialogue mechanism during his upcoming visit to Japan.

Wen made the remarks in a joint interview with journalists from 16 Japanese news media, which came ahead of his Japan tour slated for April 11-13, the first to Japan by a Chinese premier in seven years.

"During the visit to Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and I will co-chair a meeting to start up the high-level economic dialogue mechanism, and determine the respective heads of the two countries responsible for the mechanism as well as the time, venue and agenda for its first meeting," said Wen.

Wen said the dialogue mechanism is a key measure for building up strategic economic relations between China and Japan and will complement various other cooperative mechanisms that have already been established between the two countries.

Wen said China and Japan should identify the targets, approaches and key orientations for bilateral economic and trade cooperation through the dialogue, adding that the two should particularly strengthen collaboration in fields of energy conservation, environmental protection, hi-tech, small and medium sized enterprises, finance and information.

China will adopt an open attitude to economic and trade cooperation with Japan as long as such cooperation is based on mutual benefit and equality, said Wen.

He stated China and Japan should make full use of multilateral mechanisms such as the World Trade Organization, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, 10 plus 3 (10 ASEAN countries plus China, Japan and the Republic of Korea) and East Asia Summit, to intensify consultation and cooperation in addressing global energy and climate change challenges and promoting establishment of a just and reasonable multilateral trade system.

The interview took place in Zhongnanhai in downtown Beijing where China's top leaders work and live.

During the interview, Wen highlighted key figures in developing bilateral economic and trade relations.

China-Japan trade volume had increased by nearly 200 times from 1.1 billion U.S. dollars in 1972 when the two countries normalized their relations to 207.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2006.

Statistics showed that Japan has now invested in more than 30 thousand projects in China, with a total investment volume of 58 billion U.S. dollars. People-to-people exchanges between the two sides reached five million in 2006.

"Strengthening China-Japan economic and trade cooperation is in the interests of both countries", Wen stressed.

Source: Xinhua