In 2007, the bilateral trade volume between China and Japan reached US$ 236 billion, an increase of 20.6% over the previous year and 33 times that at the beginning of reform and opening up. This huge amount and rapid growth occurred against the background of China's accession to the World Trade Organization at the end of 2006 and the increase of trade disputes between the two countries, not to mention the frequent exchange rate fluctuations in the international currency market and the Japanese concern about the enhancement of China's competitiveness to some extent.

Against this background, it is interesting to speculate on the future prospects of economic relations between the two neighboring countries, especially what is special about their bilateral economic relations and what challenges they face.

I. Characteristics of Sino-Japanese Trade

Shortly after US President Richard Nixon visited Beijing, but long before the normalization of US-China relations, the bilateral diplomatic relations between People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan were normalized on 1972. The year before the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and China, the bilateral trade volume between the two countries was about 900 million US dollars, accounting for about 4% of's total foreign trade at that time. After normalization, China's imports of Japanese goods increased rapidly, mainly textiles and various mechanical tools, followed by household appliances, cars and light trucks.

Sino-Japanese relations made great progress in the1980s. 1978 a few years after China's reform and opening up, Japanese brands of televisions and cars flooded into the China market, and ordinary consumers in China began to taste western materialistic products. Through various trade ways and channels, China's imports of Japanese goods surged, which led to a serious trade deficit in China and the use of official foreign exchange reserves. This eventually led to the sharp depreciation of China's currency in the1980s.

The growth of China's foreign trade decreased in 1989- 1990, which may be mainly due to various non-economic reasons, but the bilateral trade with Japan continued to grow at a steady rate. According to the official statistics of China, Japan surpassed Hongkong to become Chinese mainland's largest trading partner in 1993, and it has remained so far. Generally speaking, between 1990 and 2002, the average annual growth rate of bilateral trade between China and China in US dollars was 16.3%, which exceeded the growth rate of's total foreign trade in the same period (15%). From 2000 to 2007, the annual foreign trade volume increased by 16%.

Since1early 1990s, the bilateral trade between China and Japan has been growing rapidly and more or less steadily (except for the short-term growth of 1997-98), which seems unusual and even puzzling. First of all, in many years of this period, the Japanese economy and Japan's overall foreign trade slowed down obviously compared with the 1980 s. Second, because the Asian financial crisis has hit many economies and their intra-regional trade hard, the bilateral trade between China and Japan has suffered only a slight setback in the turbulent two years of 1997-98. Thirdly, during the period of 654 38+0998 and 2000, when the Japanese yen depreciated sharply against the US dollar, while the RMB remained firmly pegged to the US dollar, China's Japanese import and export did not seem to respond to the change of foreign exchange rate. In the case of 1998, China's exports to Japan did decline slightly (by 7%), but compared with the overall decline of Japanese imports (by 1 1.4%), the decline was relatively small. In 2000, for example, China's exports to Japan actually increased substantially, and were not affected by any adverse fluctuations in the money market. However, as long as the RMB appreciates further against the US dollar, the pressure on China's export industry will be greater than ever before.

These "unusual" seem to indicate that there is a fundamental structural driving force behind the growth of bilateral trade between China and Japan. If the economic relationship between China and Japan is similar to other ordinary bilateral economic relations, the growth of bilateral trade may be much slower. In addition, even though (from the Chinese point of view) China's economy and trade have achieved a high growth record, it is still doubtful why the trade between China and Japan has grown faster than that with the whole outside world since the early 1990s.

Two. "Special Relationship" between China and Japan

At present, China has surpassed the United States to become Japan's largest trading partner, and Japan is also China's third largest trading partner. At the same time, Japan is China's largest source of imports and the fourth largest export market.

We should always bear in mind that whether at the beginning of reform and opening up or after 30 years of development, China was and is catching up with the developed countries to which Japan belongs for a long time. During this period, both China and Japan experienced some fundamental economic structural changes, which affected the trade and economic relations between the two countries. Here we are interested in the common or lasting factors that play a role in the interaction between demand and supply of each side of the economic relationship between the two countries.

We will first look at China's demand for Japanese products, and then look at Japan's demand for China products.

With the economic growth and increasingly diversified trade partnership network in the whole11990s, China's demand for Japanese products has gradually shifted to relatively high-quality consumer goods and industrial products with international price competitiveness. As we all know, a number of new domestic electronic products manufacturers in China have emerged, and their share in the domestic market in China has been expanded, resulting in a decline in the market share enjoyed by some Japanese brands in the past. However, as a whole, Japanese manufacturers have succeeded in investing in R&D and entering the high-end market, thus maintaining their competitiveness in the world manufacturing market and China's domestic market. On the other hand, Japan's direct investment in China and Japan's financial assistance to China should also be paid attention to in promoting bilateral trade.

Throughout the1990s, Japanese direct investment almost always exceeded 100% of China's foreign direct investment inflow every year, although there was some obvious decline between 1997 and 2000. In addition, Japanese direct investment in China is relatively concentrated in manufacturing industry, which is considered to play a stronger role in creating trade links between the two countries than other aspects.

Japanese invested in China in the early11990s, and its trade declined in the late11990s, but recovered in the millennium. This recovery may be due to the prospect of China becoming a part of the World Trade Organization (WTO). "By 200 1 year, China's international trade scale has ranked sixth in the world", and it is predicted that in the next few years, China will become the fourth largest trading country in the world after Japan. By the end of 20071February, Japan's actual investment in China had reached $665,438+560 million. Japan has become the second largest source of investment in China.

Japan's economic assistance to China (which first started with the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in the 1970s) is mainly through intergovernmental channels, totaling about $20 billion in the form of preferential loans, and another $2 billion is mainly technical assistance. Japan is the largest economic aid provider in China. This kind of financial assistance has played a very positive and multifaceted role in the development of China, and it will certainly contribute to the growth of bilateral trade.

Since 1995, Japan has been playing a very active role in using WTO laws to challenge its main trading partner, the United States. But its emphasis on the rule-based approach is not limited to the United States. In fact, it may also spread to trade disputes with key Asian partners. Due to historical reasons, it is difficult for Japan to take a confrontational stance in Asia. This is especially true for China. China is widely regarded as a rising economic power, which poses a direct challenge to Japan on many key and sensitive economic issues. This paper pays special attention to the interaction between WTO law and politics when Japan seeks to deal with China on many trade issues and disputes.

Sino-Japanese trade relations have great potential for development, and the two sides should strengthen economic cooperation in more fields.

In the past 30 years, China-Japan bilateral trade has made great progress, with the bilateral trade volume expanding and the variety of goods increasing, which plays an increasingly important role in the development of mutual trade.

Japan is China's third largest trading partner and fourth largest export destination, while China replaced the United States as Japan's 1 export destination in July. The bilateral trade volume jumped from a meager $4.8 billion in 1978 to $236 billion last year, an increase of 48 times. During this period, China's trade with Japan was in deficit for most years.

However, the growth of Sino-Japanese trade still lags behind that of China's overall trade. In 1978, Sino-Japanese trade accounted for 23.4% of China's total trade, but last year, this proportion has dropped to less than 1 1%. Although unpopular, it also shows that there is still great potential for further expansion of bilateral trade.

Japan supports China's economic development through yen loans and grants. By the end of last year, Japan had pledged to provide China with a total of $30 billion to finance 255 projects.

Another $6,543.8+270 million was allocated to help social undertakings in China, such as education and poverty alleviation.

As China president Hu Jintao said in his speech at Waseda University in May this year: "The Japanese government has played an active role in China's modernization by providing yen loans to support China's infrastructure construction, environmental protection, energy development and scientific and technological progress."

Japan also benefited from a yen loan to China. Through the yen loan, it can ensure the import of China's resources and provide more opportunities for its enterprises to export and invest in the China market. For example, Japanese companies invest much more in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Bohai Rim. They used to invest mainly in Dalian, Liaoning Province.

With the deepening of Sino-Japanese economic cooperation, the market has replaced the government as the main driving force for bilateral trade and investment growth. Japanese yen loans have been earmarked for projects in more fields, such as the environment since 1996, China enterprises have expanded their investment in Japan, and some enterprises have listed on the Japanese stock market.

With these achievements, the two countries need to strengthen cooperation in areas of common concern such as energy conservation and environment. Due to intellectual property rights, Japanese companies are not active in technology transfer. They mainly transfer low-end technology to China.

With the China government strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights, it is wise for Japanese enterprises to enter China, so as to have a "preemptive" advantage in future cooperation. At the same time, the price of technology transfer is usually too high for China enterprises to afford, which is also an obstacle to technology trade between the two countries.

The two sides should also strengthen the cooperation between Japanese SMEs and China enterprises by establishing "Japan SME Park" and other measures. China International Trade Association is setting up a system to help Japanese SMEs' products enter the China market.

It is interesting to speculate on the future prospects of economic relations between these two neighboring countries, especially what is special about their bilateral economic relations and what challenges they face.

If the economic relationship between China and Japan is similar to other ordinary bilateral economic relations, the growth of bilateral trade may be much slower. In addition, even though (from the Chinese point of view) China's economy and trade have achieved a high growth record, it is still doubtful why the trade between China and Japan has grown faster than that with the whole outside world since the early 1990s.

This is the material I used to find when I wrote my thesis. Please search by topic, I hope it will be useful.