China Plans Talks With Japan, Korea on Free-Trade Area
By Bloomberg News - May 13, 2012
The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea agreed to start negotiations this year on a free-trade accord between three of Asia’s four biggest economies.
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and South Korea President Lee Myung Bak met in Beijing yesterday as their trade ministers signed an investment agreement described as the “first legal document on trilateral cooperation in the economic field.”
The establishment of a free-trade pact will unleash the economic vitality of the region and give a strong boost to economic integration in East Asia, Wen said yesterday, according to a pool report. China has proposed coastal Shandong province as its base for a regional economic cooperation zone, Wen said, with Japan and South Korea to nominate appropriate locations of their own.
Cooperation among the three nations is “very important” to ensure that the Asia-Pacific region is the growth center of the world, Japan’s Noda said, according to the pool report. South Korea’s Lee, referring to economic problems facing the U.S. and Europe, added: “In times of crisis, if countries, for their own survival, carry out protectionist ideas, then the recovery of the economy will take a long time.”
A free-trade accord would bring together a market of more than 1.5 billion people. Closer economic and trade ties may also help defuse political mistrust in the region, a legacy of Japan’s invasion of China and the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century.
bloomberg.com |
