The last of the relevant G20 ministerial meetings under Japan's presidency – the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting – will be held in the Japanese city of Nagoya on Friday. Talks are expected to be around trade, investment and improving the functions of existing multilateral frameworks, based on the outcomes of the Osaka Summit. 

The presence of Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has triggered discussions of the future of China-Japan relations. Experts believe that it will be another chance to push China-Japan relations forward ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's planned visit to Japan next spring. 

Wang Yi and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi will jointly hold the first meeting of the China-Japan high-level consultation mechanism on people-to-people exchanges, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The meeting will promote in-depth exchange of views on bilateral cooperation in culture, education, sports, tourism, media, film and television, youth, local governments and women, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said at Thursday's regular press conference.

The two countries have promoted bilateral cultural exchanges, together with cooperation in the fields of security, military among others. "Cultural exchanges" have been an often-repeated term in discussions of improving bilateral ties. 

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"In order to further enhance people-to-people exchanges, the year 2019 will see the promotion of China-Japan youth exchange, and the two countries will take the opportunity of hosting the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, respectively, to enhance exchanges," Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who visited Beijing on October 26 last year.

The two countries decided to arrange 30,000 young people to make exchanges and mutual visits in the next five years.

In 2018, the number of personnel exchanges between China and Japan reached 12 million, more than 1,400 direct flights per week were operated, and the number of sister cities also exceeded 250 pairs, Geng said.

As Yasuo Fukuda, former Japanese prime minister and chief advisor of the executive committee of the festival, has said, cultural exchanges are "the foundation of state-to-state exchanges."

Going together with cultural communication, it is worth mentioning that the two sides carried out frequemt high-level exchanges in 2018 when China and Japan marked the 40th anniversary of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

There were significant visits on both sides this year, when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Japan in May and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited China in October. The meetings resulted in the signing of hundreds of deals including a massive currency swap agreement, the establishment of a maritime and air liaison mechanism and so on.

"A channel of dialogue is a key premise of solving any disputes," Wang Chong, a senior fellow of the Charhar Institute, told CGTN.

Signs of warming have continued this year. Xi and Abe reached a 10-point consensus on promoting bilateral relations on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka in late June and Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan attended the enthronement ceremony of Japanese Emperor Naruhito in Tokyo in October, as Xi's special envoy and paid a friendly visit to Japan.

Meanwhile, Abe has said on several occasions that the ties between the two countries have entered a "new stage," a "new era" and a "new dimension." 

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The resumption of the China-Japan strategic dialogue in August is another important sign that Beijing and Tokyo have pushed forward their bilateral relations on the right track and forged for even closer ties, said Lu Hao, a researcher from the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

In an opinion piece, Tom Fowdy, a British political and international relations analyst, wrote that political differences will be managed and restrained accordingly for the bigger goal of attaining prosperity in both countries.

China-Japan trade recently constituted around 278 billion U.S. dollars, and China is Japan's largest trading partner.

According to the Japanese External Trade Organization, which is affiliated to the Japanese government, in 2017, 48.3 percent of Japanese enterprises in China said they had plans to expand their investment in the coming two years.

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"The two sides have a great future and huge potential in transportation machinery, energy and chemical machinery, and financial services," said He Lifeng, director of China's National Development and Reform Commission.