Dialogue with industrial cooperation and seek common development prospects. Beginning on August 13, the series of activities of the "2021 Dialogue Shandong-Japan·Shandong Industrial Cooperation Exchange Conference" jointly sponsored by the Shandong Provincial People's Government, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and Japan External Trade Organization was officially launched. Many guests from the Japanese embassy and consulate in China, Japan Business Association, and corporate representatives will meet Shandong through a combination of online and offline channels to discuss the trend of Sino-Japanese industrial chain cooperation under the background of RCEP and share opportunities for investment and development in Shandong. "Both sides look forward to promoting the upgrading of the industrial chain and supply chain through pragmatic docking and exchanges, continuously optimizing the industrial ecology, and achieving win-win cooperation." said Yu Fenggui, president of the Provincial Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

Shandong and Japan have had frequent economic and trade exchanges since ancient times. Statistics show that there are 1,377 Japanese investment companies in Shandong, with a total investment of 11.29 billion U.S. dollars and operating income of 123.24 billion yuan.

Xinxu Electronics (Weifang) Co., Ltd. is a Japanese wholly-owned enterprise that mainly produces automobile backing radar cables and medical equipment cables. Thanks to the high-quality service policies and business environment of the local government, since the company settled in Fangzi District, Weifang City in 1995, its registered capital has increased from the initial 60,000 US dollars to 4.6 million US dollars, the number of employees has increased from the initial 50 to 1,800, and the scale of development continues to grow.

The government has arranged service specialists for us to come to the company on a regular basis to understand our needs and solve the problems encountered.", introduced by Meng Xiangzhong, the company's deputy general manager. Japanese investor also helped us to introduce another Japanese-funded enterprise-Newtex Wire (Weifang) Co., Ltd. settled in Fangzi District, and the company became the leading enterprise in the electronics industry in the district.

In recent years, Shandong has fully implemented the national treatment plus negative list management system before foreign investment access, greatly relaxed market access, and strengthened "factors follow the project" to break the bottleneck constraints of factors, and continue to optimize the business environment to let foreign businesses including Japanese enterprises in Shandong invest and develop with confidence in Shandong. In the first half of this year, Shandong approved 58 Japanese-funded projects, an increase of 23.4%; the actual use of foreign capital was 210 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 182.7%, which was 148.8 percentage points higher than the national level.

In 2020, with the signing of RCEP, Shandong will actively seize this opportunity, benchmark international high-standard trade rules, carry out in-depth process reengineering, promote AEO corporate certification, and transform location advantages into cooperation mechanism advantages.

At 10 o'clock in the evening on August 10th, the Japanese-funded company Yantai Lumei Food Co., Ltd. was brightly lit. Workers were busy producing frozen crab meat and other products that will be exported to Japan. This is the normal business situation of the company after it has passed the AEO certification and obtained the Japanese order.

The AEO system is a world-wide trade facilitation system, which aims to certify and recognize import and export companies that meet relevant standards through customs, and give certified companies preferential customs clearance and convenience. On June 1, 2019, China and Japan reached an agreement to mutually recognize AEO, and Lumei Food also put forward a demand for AEO certification. "The Japanese customers clearly stated that they will give priority to orders from AEO-certified companies," said Wang Zhentao, the company's manager.

After understanding the situation, Yantai Customs took the initiative to provide door-to-door service and quickly helped the company complete the AEO certification in accordance with the regulations. Wang Zhentao said that thanks to the attentive service of the customs, the company exported 1,400 tons of frozen crabmeat and tan fish to Japan in the first 7 months of this year, with a total export value of 61.5 million yuan.

According to Zhou Yi, deputy chief of the Trade Statistics and Analysis Section of the Qingdao Customs Statistics and Analysis Office, Shandong’s imports and exports to Japan amounted to 100.86 billion yuan in the first seven months of this year, an increase of 21.1%.