Facing each other across the sea, East China's Shandong province and Japan enjoy close economic and trade exchanges. Japan is currently Shandong's fifth largest trading partner.

Containers are loaded onto a ship berthed at Qingdao Port, Shandong province. [Photo by Zhang Jingang/for China Daily]

Official statistics show that in the first half of this year, Shandong's import and export trade with Japan totaled 86.83 billion yuan ($13.44 billion), up 21.3 percent year-on-year. Among them, exports reached 65.78 billion yuan, up 16.8 percent, while imports hit 21.05 billion yuan, up 38 percent.

During this period, Shandong approved 58 Japan-funded projects, a year-on-year increase of 23.4 percent. The amount of actually utilized foreign capital from Japan reached $210 million, up 182.7 percent year-on-year.

There are 1,377 Japanese invested enterprises in Shandong, with a total investment of $11.29 billion and an operating income of 123.24 billion yuan.

Lyu Wei, deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Commerce, said that Shandong attaches great importance to economic and trade cooperation with Japan.

Japan's world top 500 companies like Sumitomo, Itochu, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Marubeni, Panasonic, Komatsu, and Toray, as well as a large number of Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises have invested in Shandong.

Lyu said that the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement has brought about new opportunities for economic and trade cooperation between Shandong and Japan.

Shandong will launch more measures and policies to facilitate cooperation with Japan, added Lyu.