Bilateral trade volume between China and Japan could top 200 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, said Chong Quan, spokesman of China's Ministry of Commerce.

Japan is the second largest investor in China. Trade volume between the two countries in the first eight months this year had reached 131.3 billion U.S. dollars, 11.8 percent up from last year.

Chong said that he hoped the two countries could enhance cooperation in environmental protection, especially between small and medium sized enterprises.

"Environmental protection is one of the major tasks of China's 11th Five-Year Plan, for which the government has earmarked 500 billion U.S. dollars while Japan excels in garbage and sewage disposal as well as utilization of renewable energy sources," said Chong. He revealed that the two countries will open a symposium on environmental protection next year.

Chong Quan made the speech at the eleventh Sino-Japanese Economic Symposium held in the Changxing County in East China's Zhejiang Province on Monday to over 500 politicians and businessmen from both countries.

"China has great potential in economic development while Japan has stepped out of economic depression," said Nikai Toshihiro, member of Liberal Democrats' Diet Affairs Committee, "so the two countries can seek cooperation in new fields for mutual development."

Ryoki Sugita, head of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japanese Economic News Press), noted that an improvement in relations between China and Japan is the basis of economic cooperation. He said that hoped the two countries could resume their friendship.

The biannual symposium, co-organized by the Chinese government's mouthpiece People's Daily and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, closely follows the new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's landmark visit to China. The visit was hailed as a "turning point" in the declining China-Japan relations.