China's trade with Japan continues the downward trend this year, according to a report on the country's foreign trade which was published by the Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday.

The two-way trade came to 45.97 billion U.S. dollars in the first three months, a rise of 11.6 percent year on year. However, the growth rate was lower than the 12 percent increase pace in the same period of 2005, said the report.

During the January-March period, China's exports to Japan grew 9.2 percent, down 13.6 percentage points year on year.

In 2005, the report said, Sino-Japanese trade volume grew 9.9 percent to 184.44 184.41 billion U.S. dollars, a drop of 15.8 percentage points from 2004.

However, Zhang Jifeng, director of the Economic Research Department of the Japanese Research Institute with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believed that the "short-term trade volume data can not prove that the Sino-Japanese trade ties are cooling."

"Around 10-percent growth pace for Sino-Japanese trade is normal in the future," he said, as the two-way trade is maturing after a development of more than 10 years.

Between 1990 and 2004, the two-way trade between China and Japan grew an average 14.6 percent.

Statistics showed that Japan's direct investment in China increased by 20 percent in 2005, a high growth rate, said Zhang.

This indicated that the current "cold political but warm economic ties" between the two countries have not been changed, he noted.

Source: Xinhua