China, Japan and South Korea signed the three-way trade agreement

Wednesday, June 20, 2012. 13:11

China's Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and South Korea President Lee Myung Bak met in Beijing on Sunday, May 13, 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 on Sunday, according to a pool report.

The three nations are major traders, and together accounted for 19.6 percent of the world's economy and 18.5 percent of its exports in 2010, according to a feasibility study of the proposed trade pact that the governments issued late last year. Trade between the three countries rose to $690 billion in 2011 from $130 billion in 1999, according to a research report released by China’s foreign ministry on 9 May.　

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. Closer cooperation between the three nations will not only be conducive to the development of each country itself, it will also boost regional economic integration, industrial cooperation and technology advancement and add drivers to world economic growth.