Han Zheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council, met with the Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso in Beijing on Thursday, who will attend the seventh China-Japan Finance Ministers' Dialogue. The two sides exchanged views on China-Japan relations and bilateral economic and financial cooperation.

Han said China has always attached importance to Sino-Japanese relations. With the joint efforts from both sides, the bilateral relations have returned to the normal development track. 

He noted that China and Japan have broad prospects for cooperation in the economic and trade fields, and expected the two sides to capitalize on the dialogue mechanism to put into practice the important consensus reached by the two countries' leaders, and actively expand and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation. 

China is willing to work with Japan to maintain a rules-based multilateral trading system to facilitate trade and investment liberalization, added Han.

Aso said that Japan is also ready to further implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries in May this year and promote the economic and trade development of both countries.

Shortly after the meeting with Han, Aso met with Chinese finance minister Liu Kun at the seventh China-Japan Finance Ministers' Dialogue and both sides agreed the two countries will oppose trade protection and unilateralism, and will give more roles to multilateral platforms such as G20 and World Bank, one year after such a meeting in Japan's Yokohama.

The Japanese minister said after the Finance Ministers' Dialogue that the current round of financial dialogue with China was "extremely good," and that both sides agreed to maintain cooperation in macro-economic policies and measures.

The Chinese side was "cordial", Aso told reporters in Beijing, following the China-Japan Finance Dialogue.

The dialogue follows a meeting between Japanese President Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in May in which China agreed to sign a currency swap deal with Japan and grant Japanese investors for the first time an investment quota under the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFII) program. 

The RQFII program was set up in 2011 to allow overseas financial institutions to use offshore yuan to purchase securities in Chinese mainland including stocks, bonds and money market instruments.

The dialogue was the seventh of its kind, with the last one held in May 2017. "The mood was extremely good," Aso said.

China and Japan agreed to uphold a multilateral trading system that is based on free market rules, Aso said.