Guangzhou, the host city of the 2017 Fortune Global Forum, holds a symposium in Tokyo, Japan, April 25-27. [Photo by Cai Hong/China Daily]

A symposium in Tokyo, Japan is boosting a new level of cooperation between Chinese and Japanese companies as Guangzhou invites guests from the world's top 500 enterprises to attend the 2017 Fortune Global Forum in December. The forum opened on April 25 and will run until April 27.

More than 150 people have already attended the symposium, including a delegation from Guangzhou administrative bodies and representatives from JETRO, Nomura Holdings and various Japanese Fortune 500 companies, as well as Guangzhou leading enterprises.

Guangzhou has had a long friendly relationship with Japan since it forged a sister-city tie with Japan's Fukuoka in May 1979, the first of this kind. Bilateral trade has achieved win-win results since then.

In 2016, import-export trade between Guangzhou and Japan grew to 84.68 billion yuan ($12.30 billion), a 12.5 percent increase year on year. That figure includes imports from Japan to Guangzhou totaling 61.56 billion yuan, an 11.8 percent rise, while exports from Guangzhou to Japan increased 14.4 percent to 22.82 billion yuan.

Guangzhou has been cutting down red tape and streamlining government administration to facilitate foreign enterprises' operations in the city.

With a favorable business environment, Guangzhou is enormously attractive to foreign investors, and Japan is one of its most important trade partners. Japanese auto giants like Honda, Toyota and Nissan have expanded their Chinese business presence by establishing automobile manufacturing plants in the city to capitalize on its progressive investment offerings.

In March Japan-based Sakai Display Products Corp, a subsidiary of the world's largest electronics contractor Foxconn Technology Group, signed a 61-billion-yuan contract to build an industrial park in Guangzhou for manufacturing of advanced generation 8K displays.

It took only 50 days from project negotiation to contract signing, and 31 days from that point to project start, a typical result celebrated as "Guangzhou speed" by media outlets both in China and overseas.

The 2017 Fortune Global Forum will be held in Guangzhou on Dec 6-8, offering a perfect platform for connecting CEOs of the world's most important multinational companies with world leaders.