On December 27, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda arrived in Beijing, starting his official visit to China. In the morning that day a Japanese government spokesman said that the two parties will hold talks on economic issues as well as challenges the two countries all face right now, including IPR protection. In addition to this, the Japanese Premier will visit Tianjin, a coastal city close to Beijing, have first-hand experience about Sino-Japan economic cooperation.

According to the spokesman, Fukuda's visit to China is an important high-level trip between China and Japan after former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ice-breaking trip in October last year and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's ice-thawing trip this year. So the ongoing visit is realized on the base of the improvement of the two countries' relationship over the past one more year. Thus Japanese government is confident that the visit will not only give the special year, 35th anniversary of normalization of the Japan-China diplomatic relations, a good end, but also "bring a spring" to the two countries' relationship in the future.

Japan and China are economically indispensable as China is the largest trade partner of Japan, while Japan is the largest investor of China right now, the spokesman said.

In the first Sino-Japan Economic Senior Dialogue held in December 2007, Chinese Vice Primer Zeng Peiyan, on behalf of Chinese government, wished the relevant government departments of two countries to work together for improving trade and investment environment between the two countries, and to launch dialogues about issues such as quality standard and IPR protection so as to provide a sound system and legal environment for bilateral trade exchange.

SIPO and JPO also held their 14th Commissioner Conference in Beijing recently, and reached agreement in training as well as other issues. For further promote and enhance the exchange and cooperation between the two countries in IP field, China IP Society and Japan Invention Association have also successfully held four IP symposiums since 2003.