The two opposite curves drawn by the research institute under Ministry of Commerce Tuesday show that China's trade dependence to Japan is a falling while Japan's to China is rising over the past 11 years.

Jin Baisong, a research fellow with the institute who has handled Sino-Japan frictions over agricultural produces said that the importance of Japanese market to China is declining rapidly while the importance of Chinese market to Japanese economy is increasing.

This is the most comprehensive analysis on this issue by the Ministry's think tank over the past years, and Jin illustrated the Sino-Japan trade tendency with statistics.

In 2005, the proportion of trade with Japan to China's foreign trade fell from 24 percent in 1994 to 13 percent and Japan's status as China's major trading partner was also down.

However there is a completely different situation from Japan's prospective: China has become Japan's largest trading partner, replacing the US, and played a crucial role in its economic recovery.

"It is estimated that China has contributed nearly one percentage point growth to Japan's economic recovery," said Jin. Although Japan maintained huge favourable trade balance with the US, it keeps dropping in the recent years. For Japan, China factor is more important than the US'.

Jin's analysis has happened to be similar with that by a leading Japanese research institute that Japan will see an average economic growth rate of 1.91 percent till 2010, and the investment to China and development of processing industry will further propel its economic growth by 0.8 percent.

The senior citizen in Japan by 2030 will account for 33 percent of its total population. It is estimated that Japan's economic growth will be slowed for the lack of labour after 2010. But the populous China may solve the problem easily.

By People's Daily Online