China, South Korea and Japan have held their first trilateral economic and capacity forum in Tokyo, aiming to connect thinktanks, enterprises and governments from the three countries.

There is no doubt that Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul place importance in the trilateral economic cooperation, in bilateral and multilateral capacity. However, it seems the scope of the trilateral cooperation is not restricted within the bounds the three nations.  Academia, Entrepreneurs and government officials from China Japan and Republic of Korea gathered in Tokyo, to discuss possibilities of trilateral cooperation’s in the Asian markets. China Japan and ROK account for 20.7 percent of global GDP and 18.4 percent of total global trade.  Experts say joint trilateral efforts can expand the market potential exponentially

"The cooperation between Korea, Japan and China is very important in the Asian Pacific Region, because we three countries is most developed and the biggest nations. In actuality, cooperation among our three nations is test bed methodologically on one hand, and also it will reduce over competition between our three nations," Jung Whan-Woo, reserach fellow with Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, said.

China is eager to play a supporting role in the collaboration effort. Experts say benefits of such joint efforts will go beyond economic benefits

"If the three countries can take advantage of each, and cooperate in the economic sense, in the forth party or the other place of the world. We will turn competition among them into what we call “Coo-petiton” it’s a collaboration and competition together. So it will not only relax the tension among them but also create new opportunities," Tsinghua University vice president Yang Bin said.

Participants hope that opportunities like this, exchanging ideas will assist future trade negotiations.

"I think our three nations have considerable weight in global economy and importance in trade. We have a huge presence especially in East Asia. I hope that the three nations can united together, and accelerate the China, Japan ROK trilateral FTA, and the RCEP negotiations," Iwao Okamoto, president of Japan-China Econonic Association, said.

This roundtable is the first of more forums that the organizers are hoping to organize in the future. Hoping to enhance trust and exchange ideas to boost the trilateral economic cooperation.