Noda's trip provides new opportunity to enhance China-Japan mutual trust

BEIJING, Dec. 25 (Xinhua) -- As Japan's Yoshihiko Noda starts his first prime ministerial visit to China on Sunday, the trip provides a new opportunity to enhance mutual trust and cooperation between the two major economies.

For Japan, China is not a competitor. It is a cooperation partner that has a tremendous market for Japanese cars, cartons and high-tech appliances. Fast-growing bilateral trade has injected vitality to both economies in the tsunami of world economic recession.

China now is Japan's largest trading partner. Two-way trade approximated 300 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, marking a 30.2-percent increase year on year. The volume was only 1 billion dollars in the early years since the 1972 normalization of bilateral ties.

Japan, on the other hand, has become China's third largest source of foreign investment as its enterprises have invested more than 77 billion dollars in China.

In April, China purchased 16.6 billion dollars' worth of Japanese long-term bonds, hitting a new high in the past six years. Now, Japan is considering buying about 10 billion dollars of Chinese bonds.

With the China-Japan economic relations growing rapidly, the two countries have seen their interests increasingly interwoven.

Against this backdrop, Noda's visit and the upcoming 40th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan diplomatic relations offer a great chance for the two countries to steer their relationship further forward.

Although problems still remain between the two countries, they should follow the spirit of cooperation so as to promote political mutual trust and protect the bilateral relations from falling into what is called the security dilemma.